I Miss This Night Already

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Hey y’all! I hope you had the best weekend! Price and I have been on a high all weekend because of all the fun we had on Thursday night with the winners of the Wine Tasting Dinner giveaway that Colony Wine Market and I teamed up on! I’ll just jump right in and tell y’all about our menu, the pairings, and a few little tidbits that really stood out to me!

First Course: Bubbles

To kick things off at 6:30ish, when our three winners and their guests arrived at our home, we had BUBBLES!  Scott, owner of Colony Wine Market and an enthusiastic sommelier (this guy knows his stuff!!), gave each guest a glass of  Montsarra Cava, which is a Spanish Brut. This is similar to champagne but is much more affordable. I’ve actually blogged about it before here! Sparkling wine is one of my favorite things in the world, so of course it should stand alone as a course of its own without any food 😉

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Second Course: Charcuterie Paired with Rosé and Pinot Gris

For almost all the rest of the courses, Scott chose two wines to go with each, just so we could experience the ultimate variety! He did make it clear that he is trained in knowing when people are over-imbibing, so he knew just how much of a pour of each wine to give to keep the evening safe! He did a great job! Ok now on to the food…

For this course, we sort of had a “build your own canapés” situation: Thinly sliced, toasted French bread rounds, red pepper hummus, sopressa, salami, proscuitto, havarti cheese, and aged gouda cheese (which I learned is properly pronounced ‘HOW-da.’ So whip that out at your next party to draw some Who is this snob? looks!) My personal favorite on this course was the havarti cheese. Girlfriend has a new favorite dairy product to start buying from here on out…. YUM STUFF.

The pairings for this course were amazing: Secateurs Rosé, originating in South Africa (and boasting the prettiest label that you may remember seeing in this post!) and a crisp Pinot Gris (which I found out is the same as Pinot Grigio) from King Estate. I can totally see why wine and cheese is such a popular pairing, because they play so well off each other, just bringing each others’ flavors to life!

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Third Course: Seasoned Pork Loin, Roasted Veggies, and Fingerling Potatoes Paired with Charonnay and Pinot Noir

We went a little european on the food order, doing meat and veggies first, then salad after, to compliment the progressive boldness of the wines as the evening went on. The pork was seasoned with a really awesome seasoning called Who Dat Seasoning, which I believe is now only sold at Honey Baked Hams in Maywood Mart if any of you local friends are interested! It seemed to be a hit. The veggies were a mix of green beans, eggplant, mushrooms, and yellow squash. And who doesn’t love fingerling potatoes?

The wines paired with this course were absolutely delightful!! The Chardonnay from Alexander Valley was incredible. The whole table raved about it. And very few of us actually claim to even like chardonnay. So you know this stuff is good! I didn’t get a great photo of the Pinot Noir, but it was from a label called Spy Valley out of New Zealand. It, too was excellent. Just really light and the perfect compliment to the foods. Scott told us that if we are ever in question on what kind of wine to buy to pair with our food, Pinot Noir almost always works.

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Fourth Course: Baby Field Green and Spinach Salad with Chopped Tomatoes, Blue Cheese Crumbles, Bacon Crumbles, Kalamata Olives, and Blue Cheese Dressing paired with Graciano and a Red Blend

This was one of my favorite courses. I loved that we saved the salad for post-main course! The salad had some pretty big flavors in it, so the wines Scott paired with it were big-bodied as well. The Graciano (which is actually a new type of wine to me!) was from Biurko winery. It was rich and wonderful! And, it was an organic wine! So if that is something you’re concerned with, this is a super tasty organic wine. The Red Blend was from Sottano, an Argentine winery! The label to this one is elegant (bonus for me: the marketing freak!) and was a wonderful compliment to our salads. Scott totally nailed his selections!

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Fifth Course: Chocolate Mousse, Fresh Whipped Cream, and Fresh Berries paired with Port

This course was the perfect exclamation point at the end of the evening! I tried my hand at a homemade chocolate  mousse recipe and thank the Lord it actually turned out! I definitely plan to share more about this recipe in an upcoming blog post. It was wonderful and relatively easy! The fresh whipped cream and berries made it taste even better. Then we had port to make it even better! 

Ferreira Ruby Port was the specific kind. Just perfect with dessert! Port has such a unique flavor (I believe it’s blended with brandy? Honestly at this point in the night, our babysitter who had been watching our kids upstairs was putting them down and having a smidge of trouble, so I stepped out to help and missed the story on this wine!) It’s not something I could enjoy a full glass of, but small sips mixed in with bites of chocolate and berries is top notch.

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

The perfect wine and dinner pairing menu as prepared by Colony Wine Market and THE HIVE Blog // www.thehiveblog.com

Overall, this evening was amazing. I challenge you to do your own dinner with wine pairings! Or better yet, get Scott to come to your home and do this for you and your friends! We learned so much about wine types, regions, serving temps of different kinds, and all of that fun stuff. We even felt comfortable asking our “dumb” questions about wine with Scott. Although he is very well educated in the area of vino, he is also more than approachable. Seriously such a fun time. I hope to be able to do another one of these with more of my sweet blog readers really soon!! 🙂

If any of these wines sounded interesting to you, they all came straight from Colony Wine Market in Madison! Go grab ya some today! 😉

Thank y’all so much for stopping by today! Y’all are amazing and it is an honor for me to have you here starting off your week with THE HIVE! Lots o love! XOXO

12 Comments

  1. Mary Katherine Lombardi April 16, 2018 / 6:33 am

    Laurel,
    I have so enjoyed discovering your blog and rediscovering your beautiful and fun voice! Great job! I’m loving all the pics and great info.
    Your old friend,
    Mary Katherine (Cauthen) Lombardi

    • thelovelybee April 16, 2018 / 9:48 am

      You’re so sweet Mary K!!! I think about you all the time! Miss you lots! Come visit home sometime! 🙂 XOXO!

  2. Julie Brown April 16, 2018 / 10:38 am

    This was the best night!!! And I love the pics!!!! That little camera take such good pics!!!! Cant wait to see what you team up with next!!

    • thelovelybee April 16, 2018 / 9:57 pm

      I am so glad you were there, Julie!! So nice getting to finally meet you!

  3. Whit April 16, 2018 / 1:20 pm

    Oh, the bunbles❣️ Sigh….Yum and so pretty?

    • thelovelybee April 16, 2018 / 10:00 pm

      Bunbles are the BEST!! (And I KNAW you meant bubbles because we BAWTH love dem BUBBLEZ!) Love you!!

  4. Nikki April 16, 2018 / 5:03 pm

    Sounds like such a fun night! I love your little tasting notebooks! Such a good little touch.

    Nikki
    thefashionablewife.com

    • thelovelybee April 16, 2018 / 9:59 pm

      Thanks friend!! They did end up coming in pretty handy! 🙂

    • thelovelybee April 16, 2018 / 9:58 pm

      So excited about our upcoming Gathering!! I hope to get a blog post put together this week to help get the word out a little more!! Love you!

  5. msks April 24, 2018 / 10:19 am

    YAAAAY!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *