By Greg B.  So I’ve been posting a lot of beer related links lately, and who can blame me?  Beer is the world’s finest beverage (possibly food group) and has been for millenia.  However, wine can be good as well, in moderation, and one late spring night the weather was perfect for sitting outside (until the tiger mosquitoes found us), so Gabi, Manuela and I popped the cork on a nice bottle of Cabernet Franc from Millbrook winery, assembled a multitude of cheeses, and sat and enjoyed the good weather.

This whole night started because I was in Whole Foods looking for whole trout, and one the way out I got side tracked by the cheese area.  I love cheese, and no doubt you do as well, and I intended only to pick up a small piece of Manchego cheese, one of my all-time favorites and something my food friend Jessica introduced me too a few years ago.  But while I was there I decided to peruse the softer cheese section and I saw something that looked delicious: a Fig Spread.  A jar of organic adriatic fig spread from Croatia, to be exact.  So, I asked the very helpful cheesemonger lady what cheeses would go best with this, she replied soft cheeses, brie, camembert that sort of thing and I went to task finding a few more cheeses.  I ended up with a Brie called Brie de meaux, a very very very soft and ripe brie, as well as a  Soignon Goat brie, made from goat’s milk.  This was a much more form brie, and with a very mild goat flavor.

Upon arriving home, Manuela joined us with a few of her own cheeses, a Fontina from Italy with a very lively flavor, a Parmigiano Reggiano from Italy with a great salt/gritty taste and mouthfeel and a Leerdammer, a cow’s milk semi-hard that she uses for various pasta and vegetable dishes.  I also opened a bottle of Millbrook Winery’s Cabernet Franc 2007.  I had heard good things about this wine, indeed, on a trip to NYC last summer I was talking with a wine reviewer who, after hearing I was from Millbrook, extolled the virtues of Millbrook winery and especially their cab franc for a good 30 minutes before I could get a word in edgewise.  I was looking forward to trying this wine!  With this spread before us, we began to sample the cheeses and enjoy the fig spread on them as well.

The cheesemonger was absolutely right.  The fig spread was a fantastic combo with the softer cheeses, and though I felt it was even good with the manchego, on the brie it really shown through.  It has a jelly like texture out of the jar, but had a seedy/more textured feeling in the mouth while eating.  The sweetness of the fig was nicely balanced by a bitterness, no doubt from the seeds in the spread.  This combo, along with the very earthy, ripe soft brie was a fantastic combo to taste.  The wine poured a very dark juicy looking red color and actually had (the wine guy from NYC was right) the best flavor of any NY wine I’ve had.  It had a fruity nose with a bit of spice, and the taste echoed this as well.  Ripe fruits, plum and juicy sweet raspberry on the palate was a great match for the fig spread, and the wine had a hint of spice at the backend and some tannins that really helped it go nicely with some of the fattier cheeses.  This was a nice pairing and the wine was a very good one as well… well worth the $15 or so a bottle I paid for it!

Few things are more relaxing than a few good friends, a pile of delicious and different cheeses and a nice bottle of wine on a clear, warm, but not humid, late spring day.  While beer would have been great here as well, beer has one advantage over wine that sometimes can be a disadvantage.  Beer is liquid bread, and very filling while wine is liquid juice and not nearly as filling.  On an evening like this, I reached for a wine, but you can bet your bottom dollar at some point in the future, I’ll post an equivalent evening where I reached for some beer.