Marine Biologists Discover Wine Amazing With Seafood, Pair It With Mermaid

Sometimes when you taste a wine, you just note that you like it and want to take it home.  Other times you may think of a particular person with whom you want to share the bottle.  At still other times, you taste a wine and think of a specific food pairing.  The last was definitely the case when I tasted the ’09 Church Creek Steel Chardonnay from Chatham Vineyards when we visited the Eastern Shore with some fellow VA wine bloggers last summer.  I immediately thought of scallops!  We finally had fresh scallops and the foresight to chill this bottle of wine on the same night, so we got to see if my instinct was good.

The wine offered a crisp lemon and apple nose with a lot of great acid on the palate.  Lemon was definitely the dominant flavor, and this let it pair amazingly well with the grilled scallops that Grape Envy Guy has perfected (thanks to some help from Cooks Illustrated).

In this case, my food pairing instinct was pretty safe – after all, a steel chard and fish isn’t a crazy, unheard of idea.  That said, the strong lemon notes in this wine made it a particularly welcome pairing with the scallops, and the grilled scallops ended up being just creamy enough to balance out the acid in the wine.

All in all, I’d say this is a winner of a wine, and if you get the chance to pick up a bottle, do so – at least if you like some bright acid in your whites.

 

…these are a few of my favorite things

For the most part, I’m a red wine drinker.  It’s not that I don’t like white wines, I do.  Maybe this started because reds don’t have to be chilled, so I didn’t have to plan ahead as much.  Maybe it was because it took me longer to find flavorful whites that appealed to me than was the case with reds.  Regardless, the bulk of the wines we buy and drink are red.  That said, one of my favorite wines – the “if you had to be stuck on a desert island with only 1 type f white wine and 1 type of red wine to drink, what would it be” type – is sauvignon blanc.  The crisp, refreshing acidity of a good sauv blanc just makes me happy.

Another thing that makes me incredibly happy are scallops.  Given the expense associated with high quality scallops, they’re not something we buy a whole lot of, but Grape Envy Guy knows how much I love them, so he gets them into our menu plan ever now and then.  Scallops invariably make me want a crisp refreshing white wine to have with dinner, and often, the wine that gets tapped for a pairing is a sauv blanc.

To be perfectly honest, much as I love sauv blanc and VA wine, this isn’t a grape that shines in many parts of VA.  That said, we have been fortunate enough to have some great local sauv blancs from vineyards that clearly have the right micro-climates to get the most from this grape.  My favorites typically come from Jeff White, owner/winemaker at Glen Manor Vineyards, and we recently decided to pair a bottle of his ’07 sauv blanc with some grilled scallops, grilled smashed potatoes, and grilled asparagus all topped with a basil vinaigrette.

So, the wine… The nose was mostly tropical fruit, but there was also a hint of green grassyness in there as well.  On the palate, I note lime, tropical fruit, a hint of grass, some light minerality, and some bracing acidity.  The wine worked really well with the meal – including the asparagus, which is typically seen as a vegetable that doesn’t always pair well with wine.  When tasted with dinner, the fruit flavors were tamed a bit and the minerality became more dominant.

All in all, the evening made for one happy Diva: great wine, great food, and Grape Envy Guy mastered scallop grilling (thanks to a great recipe from Cooks Illustrated)!