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.
I am sure the recipe provided by Veramar is delicious. I love piccata chicken and have even made it a couple of times, but to be honest I was not in a state of mind for trying a new recipe. Katie and I made the admittedly lazy decision and dined on garlic chicken pizza from our grocer's freezer. The pizza had several of the same ingredients as the piccata chicken, and more importantly for that Friday, simply required opening up the box and baking it on a cookie sheet. That was precisely the amount of time needed to fish the bottle of Chardonnay out of the refrigerator, pop the cork and let it breathe for a little bit. We sniffed the cork and smelt the oaky notes right away. Ding! There's the timer for the pizza! Katie fished it out while I poured the wine.
In smelling the oak, I got a bit nervous, as Katie usually prefers chardonnay made in steel barrels over oak. I meanwhile, prefer them a bit oaky, as long as it doesn’t feel like I’m drinking fermented tree bark. This wine provided to be an ideal compromise for us, with a definite oaky smell that I mentioned beforehand, but a subtle oaky taste. Katie enjoyed the wine and got an apple taste on her initial sip. I got the honey overtone mentioned in the Wine Club tasting notes and tasted the oak the wine was aged in. It's almost sweet at first taste, followed by the classic chardonnay taste as you finish the sip.
The Chardonnay is truly versatile, pairing well with the pizza, enhancing the garlic and olive oil tastes in addition to going well with the parmesan cheese on top. After the pizza, Katie and I made some post dinner popcorn for the movie. We found the butter in the popcorn went nicely with the creamy flavor from the malolactic fermentation and in a surprise moment, even paired well with the movie for the night, Mama Mia! The sunshine of the Greek isle featured in the movie reminded me of the sunny color of the wine and its mix of sweet and dry harmonized with the songs about love and the drama captured in the film.
Enjoying a good wine after the end of a long week, I could feel my troubles melting away, and a mood of contentment sweeping away the grind of the work week. Both the bottle and the movie ended well, the only shame is that we didn’t have another one to act as an encore.
For more information on the VA Wine of the Month Club, visit www.vawineclub.com.