Recent Wine Tasting Party

Several months ago I purchased a Wine Tasting on Living Social. I thought what better way to ignite my home decorating than to schedule a party that would give me a deadline to work toward. Well, wouldn’t you know that life happened and before you know it we were quickly approaching the expiration date and my house was no further along! Please someone tell me you can relate?!?

When I received a reminder message that our coupon was expiring, we scrambled to try to pull something together. Unfortunately the only slots remaining were on weekdays and the latest date we could arrange was also the first day of school – this had disaster written all over it. Well long story short somehow we managed to scrounge up some friends and host a wine tasting that turned out to be a good time.

I’d planned on doing something like this – courtesy of Rock UR Party! It seemed simple, fun and well laid out!

But it was a little last minute and I didn’t have time to order the chalkboard contact paper. Also, our wine teacher was going to teach us what to pair wine with so I didn’t want to be presumptuous and attempt this on my own. Our table turned out like this.

It turned out to be amazingly easy and it was under $30 (wine not included as that was part of our Living Social package).

The quiches were frozen quiches from Costco left over from another event we hosted. They required 15 minutes in the oven and they were all set. The Pear and Brie Flatbread was a Trader Joe’s recipe that took a quick 10 minutes to prepare and cook.

Ingredients:

• Trader Joe’s Lavosh Bread (Regular or Whole Wheat)
• 1 Pear, thinly sliced
• 8 ounces (or so) Brie, cubed or torn into small pieces
• 2-3 slices Prosciutto, sliced thin
• 2-3 tablespoon Brown Sugar
• 1 cup Wild Arugula

Preheat the Oven to 375°. Layer the lavosh with the pear slices, pieces of Brie, prosciutto and sugar, in that order. Bake for 5-6 minutes until the Lavosh is golden brown and the sugar has caramelized. Top with Baby Arugula and serve.

I picked a couple of soft and hard cheese to go with the wine.

For soft cheeses I picked blue cheese and a brie (which pair with a variety of white and red wines). For the hard cheeses, I used an aged cheddar (good with merlot or shiraz) and an aged gouda (which also favors the reds) we already had on hand.  You can find cheese and wine pairing charts online. Everyone will tell you something different so it’s a matter of personal preference. But for your convenience, I’ve included a link to Savvy Wine Food cheese pairing chart. I printed labels for the cheeses but I ran out of time to cut them and adhere them to toothpicks as planned.

I threw in some grapes for color and flavor. On another tray was an assortment of crackers with green apple slices to compliment the cheese.

Last up was dessert. I broke a couple of dark chocolate bars ($1.99 each) into small pieces. My friend, Britt from Cupcake Cousins, offered to make mocha cupcakes and I added a few sea salt dark chocolate covered almonds from Trader Joe’s (my priciest item at 3.99).

That’s it for putting together our last minute wine tasting. More on what we actually learned at the wine tasting next week. Don’t forget to sign up for email notifications of future posts.

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