Wine Dinner Report #2:

Tonight I made dinner by myself because none of my friends or roommates were available to do this activity with, but it's okay because it meant more food for me LOL. Plus I didn't want to go out to a restaurant and spend a lot of money tonight, so cooking at home seemed like the logical choice. My main dish was salmon and I had two side dishes accompanying it: a Santa Fe salad, and sour cream/chives mashed potatoes.

The main dish was salmon which I put a few different seasonings to give a little bit of a kick. I started with black pepper, put a good amount of cajun seasoning, and a little sprinkle of thyme because why not. I baked both filets of salmon at 450 for roughly about 13 minutes or so to make it a little extra crispy. The first side dish that I had was a Santa Fe salad which consisted of the following: lettuce, cheese, roasted corn, tortilla chips, and a chipotle sauce to finish it off. The second side dish was sour cream and chive mashed potatoes. I was more excited about this food than from my previous wine dinner report because I was not in as much of a rush to get stuff done. 

I looked up which types of wine would go well with salmon and I read that Pinot Grigios, Roses, and sweet Rieslings were the way to go. So, I went to Kroger and got one of each wine that I read about online. These honestly looked pretty good just from my initial look at each of them. Today I also did not use a wine glass, but a glass for liquor LOL because it was the only thing clean at the time. 

The 2021 Prophecy Rose Vin de France wine was very appealing to me when I saw it at the store because I am a big fan of Roses and this one was a new one I haven't tried before. I was expecting this wine to pair fairly well with the dinner I made tonight, but I am still learning about which foods balance well with different types of wine. When I first smelled the wine, it smelled very sweet as well as fruity, almost like a combination of pineapple and orange. When I first tasted the wine, it was definitely drier than I would have thought, but it was still an enjoyable dryness. I got hints of orange and surprisingly a little bit of watermelon, but no pineapple taste. With the salad, the dryness of the Rose actually pairs well with the spiciness of the salad; also, the hints of sweetness from the Rose complemented the spice of the salad as well. The mashed potatoes and this wine did not go very well together at all; I thought the creaminess of the mashed potatoes clashed with the dryness of the wine which made the sweet taste of the Rose cease to exist. The salmon actually complimented the Rose very well; again, the sweet and spicy combo was actually very well balanced which is something I really enjoy. 

The 2021 Pacific Rim Sweet Riesling from Columbia Valley, Washington also seemed appealing to me because for one it was on sale for $11.99 when it's usually $15.99, and I also have never had a sweet Riesling before so it seemed very interesting. Since I had never had this type of wine before, I had no idea how well it would pair with the dinner I had prepared even though online it said it should go well with the dishes. The aromas that I got from this wine were very sweet as well as very fruity; I smelled both peach and pineapple which were both very enjoyable. When I first tasted this wine, it was definitely not dry whatsoever and very sweet. I definitely tasted the peach flavor but not the pineapple that I initially smelled. It honestly was not overwhelmingly sweet but if it had been any sweeter, I would not have enjoyed the wine. It was also a little bit acidic. With the salad, the spiciness really complemented the sweetness of the wine; neither side was overpowering which gave it a good balance. Honestly, the mashed potatoes and this wine paired weirdly well together which was strange because the sweet Rose that I talked about did not pair well with it at all. The creaminess and the sweetness weirdly complemented each other (maybe I am just weird). With the salmon, it also paired well because of its spiciness and the sweetness of the wine. This wine actually paired well with all three parts of this dinner.

The 1908 Cielo Pinot Grigio from the Veneto region in Italy seemed interesting because I really haven't tried that many Pinot Grigios yet, so I was excited to try this one. Since I had never had this type of wine before, I had no idea how well it would pair with the dinner I had prepared even though online it said it should go well with the dishes. This wine had a very light smell to it when I tried to get a sense of what it smelled like; I actually had to sit there for a couple of minutes and really think about what I was smelling because it wasn't like any other wine I had smelled before. It did smell a little bit sweet, a little floral, and almost smelled like honey to me. When I tasted this wine, it was definitely more full-bodied than the other two wines and was pretty dry. I got a very subtle taste of sweetness before it transitioned to an overwhelming sense of bitterness which I do not like at all. Due to my dislike of bitter things, I do not think it paired well with any part of the dinner that I made tonight. It just was not appetizing and it honestly made me a bit nauseous at the end of it, so I will definitely not be trying this specific wine again.

Overall, I was actually pretty impressed with how 2 of the 3 wines paired very well with the dinner I made tonight. I will be sure not to get the same Pinot Grigio the next time because it was just gross. But I would say this was a lot more successful than the first wine dinner report.