Wine people always talk about pairings, and pairings are indeed important. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea that the right wine with the right food produces something more than either wine or food could do by itself. I talk a lot about pairings in this column because it’s interesting to me, and because I don’t see enough of it in columns that I myself enjoy reading.

Columnist Chris Townsend sits down with good friends and good wine.  Take a trip with him to taste and experience this great wine from Pearmund Cellars.

When I first started wine tasting, I thought that some of these tasting notes had a “Emperor’s New Clothes” sort of feel, and especially the term terroir. I didn’t get eucalyptus from Australian Shiraz, or chalk from Chablis, or any those other things that the notes said I should be getting from the wine.   I developed my palate over time, but the terroir, the aspects of the soil region that go into the wine, has always been the toughest thing for me. 

It had been a pretty long week for both my fiancée and I. We're at less than a hundred days till we get married and already things are swirling about with plans, schedules, purchases and tons of other small things to be done. Frankly both of us were looking forward to Friday, where nothing more was planned than sitting down to a bottle of wine and a movie.