Wine Dinner - Nick's House (Spanish/Italian/American)

So a couple of weeks ago, my friends and I (6 in total, all of whom are in the wine class) decided that we should finally get together and be civil and have a nice wine dinner. Of course, since we were going to be drinking so much wine, we decided that the best night to do it would be a Saturday... so we could just continue drinking and having a blast. We split up who would cook and who would buy wine and then got to planning. I had been craving some meatballs for a while so I decided to take the helm on cooking the entree and making spaghetti with italian meatballs.

The menu for the night was decided to be as follows:

Appetizer: PF Changs style spicy chicken lettuce wraps by Amanda
Paired with Doppf & Irion Gewurztraminer by Nick

Entree: Homemade Italian meatballs with spaghetti in a fire roasted tomato and tomato sauce by me
Paired with Monte Antico Tuscan Blend by Chris

Second Entree: Salted golden fried pork loin by Ian
Paired with Castello di Montespertoli Chianti by Other Nick

So first, I had to make my meatballs. I actually used a delicious recipe that I've been using for about a year now, and whenever I make it for anyone it always blows their mind (http://www.food.com/recipe/authentic-italian-meatballs-92095)

  

The meatballs took about 3 hours to make so while that was cooking, I let Ian (my roommate) take over and get to cooking on his fried pork. Of course he ended up making a mess. When the cooking was all done, we went over to Nick's house, because he has a basement perfect for a college wine dinner like this. Little did we know, Nick didn't actually have a table big enough to fit all of us, so he just decided to use his ping pong table. With the ping pong table it was hard to pretend that we were having a classy wine dinner, but we definitely tried by playing some soft Sinatra in the background.

  

The table with all our food and wine

Appetizer

  

So once we were all settled in, we finally got started on our dinner. The basic format that we followed for the dinner was first trying the wine to get a feel for how it tasted and felt, then trying the food to see how it tasted, and then trying the wine again to see if it changed at all with the food.

Dopff and Irion Gewurztraminer: This wine had a very nice golden color to it. It had a super distinct lychee smell on the nose with a somewhat acidic nose as well. The taste was very buttery in the mouth and the acidity mentioned before came out as well. It was both sweet and tart. I actually ended up liking this wine so much that I went out and bought it the next week.

PF Changs style spicy chicken lettuce wraps: These were made to follow the PF Changs recipe almost exactly, which anyone who has had them can say that they are phenomenal. These lettuce wraps had a mix of chinese style chicken with ingredients like peanuts, ginger, honey, and soy sauce. They were actually really spicy which I hadn't been expecting at all, but also really gingery and SUPER tasty. This was my favorite meal out of all three, so many many props to Amanda.

Pairing: After having the lettuce wraps, I found the wine to be more lemony than it had been before, perhaps from some lemon juice that had been in the lettuce wraps. I also noticed more acidity, and the gewurtz hit the spice really well. It didn't really calm it down, but added to it in a good way. The wine also brought out the sweetness in the chicken. This food and wine paired really well, which we had expected since gewurtz is supposed to go well with spicy Asian food.

Entree

  

Now it was my time to shine with my Italian meatballs. Everyone that had the lettuce wraps had said that I had a lot to live up to, but my roommates (who had all had it before) knew that this was a worthy contender. We were also really interested in how the Tuscan blend would pair with the meatballs. They were both Italian, so it would have to be good right?

2009 Monte Antico Tuscan Blend (mix of Sangiovese, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon): The blend was a very dark ruby color, you couldn't see through it at all when holding it up to the bright fluorescent lights. The nose had hints of subtle oak (no monster here) with lots of cherry. The first taste of this wine was light with not much flavor, but taking a second sip gave a clearer view of this wine. It was medium bodied with lots of cherry. The finish was a nice, loooong finish covered in cherry with a very earthy tone. Seriously, I was tasting this wine for like 2 minutes after i had my sips, it really coated my mouth.

Homemade Italian meatballs with spaghetti: These meatballs were super meaty and bready with hints of garlic. Since it was pasta, of course it was very filling. I had used a Classico fire roasted tomato and garlic sauce to go along with it so the sauce added to the garlic and gave it a little bit of a kick.

Pairing: The meatballs really subdued the fruit and cherry flavor of the wine and increased the tannins, making the wine a little bit drier in the mouth. It was also a little chalky to the taste instead of earthy like it had been before. Surprisingly, this pairing didn't work too well as it actually took away flavors from the blend. I definitely liked the wine much more without the meatballs than I did with the meatballs.

Second Entree

  

So by this time, everyone was actually decently full and a little bit tipsy. But, the promise of more wine kept everyone going, and it helped that the fried pork actually smelled pretty good. Other Nick had been raving about his wine selection so it was time to put it to the test to see how it would pair.

2007 Castello di Montespertoli Chianti: This Chianti was a dark ruby color, I think darker than the previous one. It was actually pretty hot on the nose (which, since we were tipsy by this point, we were excited for). However, upon tasting it, we didn't really get as much heat as we had expected from the nose, but once we slurped the wine a little it brought a little more heat out. It had a light finish with lots of tannins that really dried out the mouth a lot. It had a little bit of cherry in the finish as well, but otherwise there weren't many fruit flavors, more tannins.

Salted golden fried pork loin: So when Other Nick had chosen his wine, he had told Ian to make a salted meat of some kind to go with it since those are all the rave in Italy. This was Ian's Americanized version of the salted pork. I had watched him salt it, and boy did he salt these suckers. They tasted very salty, but not in a bad way. They were actually really good. The fried parts were kind of buttery but altogether it was a very nice entree with a nice amount of salt.

Pairing: The Chianti became noticeably fruity after the pork, whereas before I had detected barely any fruits flavors in it. It also mellowed the tannins out and didn't dry the mouth as much, I'm guessing because of the saltiness of the pork. However, tasting the pork after the wine brought out the saltiness in the pork a lot which was interesting. I enjoyed the wine a lot more as a pairing, since it was more fruity and less dry, but the pork became almost inedible because of the saltiness, whereas it had been perfectly fine before.

Me and Chris, Ian and Nick, and Amanda and Other Nick all enjoying our wines

After all the food was over, boy were we stuffed (and decently tipsy). I don't know how we were able to finish all the food since there was SO much, but somehow we powered through and ended up with no leftovers at all. Since we were already tipsy, Nick decided to bring out some wines that he had had sitting around for a while, specifically a wine that had been open for two weeks and another wine he bought from walmart "because it was the cheapest one they had". I will do a tasting blog on those two since we didn't pair them with any food, but boy could you tell the difference between the wines we'd already had and these two wines he brought out for us just to get drunk on. We tried classing up the evening, but I guess you can't really escape that college life.