Sometimes when you are experiencing new things, you make
little mistakes that help you learn much more than by trying to do everything
right the first time. My first time at experimenting with Oklahoma wine is a
good example of that. I knew a couple things about wining and dining before
this blog. Allowing wine to breathe before drinking and white wines with fish,
just to name a few. Besides those few exceptions, my experience with wine was
more along the lines of slapping the bag of White Zinfandel Franzia and avoid
wine hangovers at all cost.
So when I was at the
liquor store to purchase my first bottle of Oklahoman wine, I should have asked
a couple of questions. I didn’t.
There is some weird disposition I have that makes asking for
advice and direction near impossible. I understood at the time when I was
walking down the various wine aisles that it only had to say “Made in
Oklahoma.” Because I’m a broke college student and I had already dropped eight
bucks on the Choc Beer Variety pack, I knew that I was going to buy a cheaper
wine. I wanted to start my wine tasting with a red wine because I was trying to
use up some pasta sauce before it spoiled.
After struggling to find Oklahoman wine, most liquor stores
divide by wine varieties and not by place of origin, I grabbed a Merlot from
Slaughtersville, OK, and made my purchase. Eight dollar wine already seemed to
be a little bit of an underdog when it came to finding good wine, but my
disposition of saving a couple bucks struck again.
At home later that evening, I cooked the hamburger meat and
allowed my wine to aerate for ten minutes before I poured a glass. I had high
hopes because my spaghetti turned out to look and taste pretty good. Mom would
have been proud that I figured out how to prepare dinner that wasn’t delivered
to my front door. I poured my wine, prepared my plate, and dinner was served.
Being oblivious to the tasting processes that I had recently
learned, I washed down some perfectly good pasta with a swig of the merlot… not
good.
I tried to figure out why I struggled to drink the wine and
eat the spaghetti. After examining the bottle, I realized that sometimes the
price tag isn’t the only thing to look at when tasting wine. I had gotten the
Canadian River Chocolate Merlot. I decided I needed to push through and finish
the wine with dinner. Sometimes when experimenting, you are just going to get
things you don’t like.
After suffering
through a serving of spaghetti, I still had a half glass of wine left. I looked
through my fridge to find something else to munch while finishing the wine.
After the spaghetti debacle, I didn’t want to press my luck with American
cheese. I noticed a spice cake with cream cheese frosting in the back of the
fridge I made last week. Why the hell not?
After cutting a slice of cake and sitting back down, hope
seemed kind of lost. I instead stumbled on a happy accident. I found a pairing
that worked. The chocolate merlot that was so hard to drink with spaghetti went
down great with the spice cake. It was amazing how much a wine changes with how
it’s paired. I know from now on, spice cake and chocolate merlot make for a
good combo. It would be great for a romantic desert or a girls’ night.
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