Wine Tasting/Cooking Class

I hosted my first ever wine tasting/cooking class on Saturday evening for 7 wonderful, fun and funny women. For years I have put on dinner party/cooking classes but this was the first time of including a wine component and doing hors d’oeuvres instead of a full meal. I really enjoyed the evening and am pretty sure my guests did too.  I am calling this inaugural wine class a success.

Whenever I do an event I am always reminded that the success of the evening rests squarely on the shoulders of the invite list.  As much as I love food, and wine, and flowers and music and lots of flickering candles and nice linens it always comes down to having a good group of people. These women were really great and there was a lot of laughter over the course of the evening which is always music to my ears when hosting a class. Plus I had my two dear friends Leigh-Anne and Sarolta as my kitchen assistants and it is impossible to have anything but a good time when these two are around.

We started out by doing a blind tasting of three wines. I had chosen a Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc from Kim Crawford, an Alsatian Pinot Gris from Pfaffenheim and a Zinfandel from Deloach in the Russian River Valley. We swirled and sniffed and sipped and played the free association game of what the wine scents reminded us of. Pears and straw, apricots and citrus and wet slate and stewed fruit and blackberries and paint thinner (!). We talked about acidity and tannins and alcohol and complexity and balance.

We then moved to the kitchen and cooked three appetizers that would pair with each of the wines we had just tasted. We made:

Potato Feta Pancakes with Smoked Salmon and Crème Fraîche

Alsatian Tarts with Double Smoked Bacon

Roquefort Grape Truffles with Toasted Pistachios

We talked about some of the rules of food and wine pairing. We talked about wines we love and places we love to shop and cooking and good sea salt and 101 wish lists and vegan cleanses and our jobs and our families. Then we had some chocolate truffles and Moscato d’ Asti and toasted Linda who had recently celebrated a milestone birthday and had, in fact, proposed the idea for the class in the first place.

I’m feeling inspired to do more of these kinds of classes and will hopefully be able to post a schedule of upcoming classes in the near future. But for now I’m gearing up to host a wedding on the 30th of January. Very small and intimate, just 8 people and a carefully chosen 7 course menu. Stay tuned…