Wine and Cheese Pairing #1

A few friends and I decided to do our wine and cheese pairing as one of our initial wine drinking's.

We chose to drink a 19 crimes sauvignon cabernet, sun pop moscato, and sebastiani cabernet sauvignon. Wea paired these with smoked goat cheese, aged gouda, and cheddar in that respective order. There wasn't any particular reason we chose these whines outside of its what we had. We tried the white wine first and then the red wines as told in the lecture videos. 

Starting first with the Moscato, it was a very clear barely yellow drink. It smelled very water like with a small hint of pineapple but more like water. As I drank it alone there was no alcohol taste to meaning I didn't feel any burn as I drank it. There was a little bit of a citrus taste to it but for the most part is was almost water like. We ate this wine with the aged gouda which I think wasn't a good choice for pairing. the little flavor the wine did have seemed like it disappeared when we drank it in tandem with the cheese. The gouda was strong enough that I didn't really taste a difference between eating it alone and with the wine.

The next pairing was the 19 crimes cabernet sauvignon and the smoked goat cheese. The 19 crimes was very dark fruity smell. I'm not the best at smelling so I couldn't place a specific fruit but it just gave a me a dark fruity vibe. Everyone around me said they got a vanilla smell that I didn't smell but I thought it would be worth noting. Since this was a red wine it was very tannic. After drinking it more and more it started to feel a little less bitter/tannic in my mouth. When combining the cheese and wine I was a very big fan. The cheese was even stronger than the wine was so neither flavor was overpowered like it was in the previous pairing. The wine also felt like it went down significantly smoother and took away some of the bitter flavor. I wasn't able to notice any real flavor changes besides the bitterness and smoothness.

For the last pairing it was the sebastiani and the cheddar. The sebastiani smelled very similar to the 19 crimes likely since they were both cabernet sauvignons but this one smelled slightly like a lighter fruit smell instead of a fully dark like 19 crimes. I didn't like this pairing nearly as much as the prior one. Although I'm not sure it almost gave me a sour after taste when pairing them which was horrible. The wine alone was good in my opinion. It was very tannic but more bearable than the 19 crimes. I think this may have been affected by  me drinking a white wine before the 19 crimes but a tannic wine before the sebastiani. The cheddar also didn't taste that good on its own so I'm not sure if the pairing was the issue or just the cheese. Since this pairing made me feel kind of gross I didn't drink too much of it since I didn't want to feel nauseous. 

Overall, the 19 crimes and goat cheese was my favorite pairing and I wasn't a big fan of the other two.