Wine and Cheese

I really wanted to attend the 4 weeks - wine tasting seminar of Anatolian Vineyards, which promised to enjoy wine better through the improvement of senses and improvement of the ability to perceive. Unfortunately, they could not run the seminar due to insufficient demand. I was so eager to attend a seminar about wine that I accepted their suggestion to attend another seminar, Cheese and Wine, although I never thought before that it might be interesting for me.

Perran Arıbal, who was personally involved in each step of organization including serving of wines, surprised me by recognizing my face from the tasting organization in Kanyon. If you had seen the crowd in Kanyon that they, you would better understand why I was so surprised. It is nice to be remembered :) I will try harder to remember the faces of people I meet.

We had a nice conversation about wine & cheese, under the direction of Saba Açıkgöz. It was obvious that he liked talking about the subject. My impression was that he likes to enjoy anything he tastes. Following his instructions, we tasted six different cheeses matching them with three white and three red wines and tried to figure out which of them go better with each other and why some of them do not make a good pair.

I have seen that a fatty cheese goes much better with a white wine with high acidity than any other alternatives. A fatty goatcheese (which I would not normally prefer) and a Sauvignon Blanc (which I would normally keep away from me due to its high acidity) - Umurbey Sauvignon Blanc 2007 was being tasted - created a delicious taste when I tasted them together. It is possible to generalize and argue that fatty meals go better with highly acidic wines.

I usually eat cheese with bread for breakfast like every other Turkish people. I rarely order a cheese plate with my wine, but then I taste almost each cheese on the plate disregarding their harmony with my wine, because I like cheese of any kind. So therefore, I do not think that this seminar would change my life practically, but I'm sure that there will be a change in my attention and in my expectations whenever I taste something. It was a great, surprising experience to witness how a harmonic couple can create a great taste (1+1=3). Awareness is everything!