I tried to get a picture of the two new bottles of wine that were being introduced with this dinner, but my computer is telling me the disk from my camera is corrupted! Ahhhrgh! So, I am using a stock photo from the winery's website.
This winery starts you with a glass of wine when you walk in--a choice of white or red. We always choose white and received a light pinot...a perfect starter.
With the Amuse Bouche of two mini crab cakes with red pepper Romesco sauce (a bit large for an Amuse Bouche, but small for an appetizer), we were served their first new wine--a brut sparkling that they call Celebrate. It was, to our tastes, as good as Homestead's Celebration used to be (before they ran out) making it the best sparkling for the best price in Grapevine! It complimented the delicious crab cakes well--I am often wary of crab cakes--I've encountered too many shells--but these were exceptional. When the owner told us all wine would be 30% off that evening, we started plotting how many we should buy.
A mini antipasti plate came next with marinated mozzarella, salami, about the best prosciutto I've ever had, olives, and a lovely hard nutty cheese--Manchego??? This was paired with a lightly oaked Chardonnay, which we normally hate, but the pairing was perfect. We couldn't stop commenting on how well the wine complimented all components of the dish--even the acidic single cocktail onion.
Gorgonzola and cracked black pepper pork chops with potato gnocchi and sage Alfredo sauce, prosciutto roasted garlic zucchini and cheese biscuits followed. The pork chop was huge and delicious--I hated that I could only finish half of it--creamy and moist--perfectly cooked--a very difficult meat to pull off when catering. I also just tasted the gnocchi--I'd been looking forward to it having seen in made on many cooking shows, but, the reality of it was a disappointment. As far as I was concerned mashed potato with flour, rolled, cut and boiled kind of had the texture of paste that has gotten too dry in the jar. The sauce was good, though. The zucchini was way too strong of garlic for me (and that is hard to do--I put garlic in everything), and the asparagus was overcooked, thin, and wilted.
With this was served a Malbec--fruity and strong, which complimented the pork wonderfully. They came around asking us if we wanted more Malbec, but, knowing what red wine can do to us, we both declined. The first serving was quite adequate.
The dessert was an apricot mascarpone cake with toasted sliced almonds. This may have been the weakest dish of the night, or I may simply have been too full to appreciate it. After sending half of my pork chop back to the kitchen, this piece of cake looked about twice as big as necessary and I ate less than half of it. It was also too sweet for my tastes. It was served with the second of their new wines--This Wine A'int Bad.
This wine comes with a story. Back at the brewery their attempt to bring the Port to it's full 18% alcohol level had stalled at 9%. Nothing they did could make it finish its fermentation process. So, they dumped their three kinds (Raspberry Chocolate, Chocolate, and Chocolate Cherry) together and tasted it. Their first reaction after tasting this concoction became the name of the wine. They bottled about 320 bottles of their mistake and were selling it for just $18.95 (before the 30% discount.)
What did TR in, I think, was first that they poured a very generous serving of This Wine A'int Bad...so generous that I could only finish half of it. TR then proceeded to finish both my wine and my dessert...and wound up with a hangover next day. I had known I was feeling it and that I was driving, which is why I stopped.
We bought 5 bottles of the Celebrate and one of This Wine A'int Bad. Probably should have gotten more of the sparking, but we will be back. We have to introduce Julie to it.
