March Madness -Wine Tasting Gone Mad

Meatloaf cups, pizza rolls, and a beautiful flower arrangement

Ice cream sandwich and Riesling pairing

Yummy shredded pork sliders on Hawaiian bread

All of these bottles were consumed in the making of this months wine club

A recurring feature that I hope to cover each month is my wine club meeting. When I tell people I belong to a wine club the reactions range from “OMG that is so cool can I join” to “Wow you must really drink a lot of wine if you belong to a club”. Among all of the reactions I receive non is as fun as when I tell people our wine club name “The Vagina Winologues”, folks who can connect the moniker with the off Broadway play “ The Vagina Monologues” die laughing and end up giving me major props for the creativity of not only the name but the wine club idea as a whole.

So here’s a little bit of background info on the wine club. We are 16 women who gather once a month to learn more about the art of wine drinking and pairing. Each meeting has a “wine theme” and the host for that month chooses the theme and whether the meeting will be pot-luck style or fully hosted.  This month’s theme was “March Madness-Wine Tasting Gone Mad”. We each came dressed in our favorite sports attire from professional or college teams, our task being to bring a bite sized style dish, pastry or dessert paired with our choice of wine.  I can’t tell you how creative and absolutely mouthwatering the dishes that these ladies   make are, but I can show you…

We started with a really fun ice breaker game to see whose dish would be served first. The object of the ice breaker was to pass a wine bottle from person to person using only our legs (insert funny joke about knowing how to keep your legs closed here) the first person to drop the bottle had to present their dish.

I was the person to drop the bottle so I presented my dish first ( I totally did it on purpose by the way 🙂 I prepared a dish called Boccocini. It was pretty much a take on a anti pasta tray using a kabob stick. Below you can find the ingrediants I used and a couple pics of how the dish turned out…

I paired my dish with a Spanish Tempranillo called “Peromato” I’d found at “Fresh & Easy”. The bottle was $8.00 and complimented my dish perfectly. The smooth full-bodied taste paired well with the Italian tones to my meal. I’m not much of a red wine drinker but I loved the small hints of strawberry and plum in this wine. I recommend this for anyone who finds red winds to be too dry.

After my pairing we tasted a slew of other wines that were paired with dishes like spinach and artichoke dip, mozzarella pepperoni sticks, and jalepeno poppers to name a few. My favorite pairings were those that mixed dryer wines like Cabernet with sweet desserts like ice cream Sunday’s, it was perfect mix of dry and sweet and they really complimented each other in a way I wasn’t expecting.

My favorite pairing of the night was a unsuspecting dish from Trader Joe’s – Their pastry bites with caramelized onions and feta cheese were seriously TO DIE and a perfect compliment to the Pinot Noir it was paired with.

So without a doubt this months wine club was a success and just reiterates why I love the art of entertaining. The fact that I get to hang out with such beautiful, creative, supportive women is just icing on the cake! So I’d like to give a shout out to my Vagina Winologues – I truly look forward to each and every month that I get to hang out with you and learn not only about wine but also your lovely spirits. Your support of this blog venture has seriously made me feel so loved and supported and I am very grateful to count you all among my friends. Cheers!

Here are a couple more images I hope inspire other ladies and fellas out there to start their own wine club!