Easter Wine Dinner

Yes, I look exactly like my dad. Aren't we cute?

Every year I've been at college, I've made sure that I have time to go home for Easter weekend. It's a relaxing time for me, and I get to spend time with my parents and their new church in Port Royal, which holds about 30 people (a good 970 fewer people than my last church, but I like it).

When I told my parents that I was coming home and that I wanted to do a wine dinner with them, they were QUITE excited! Mom & I began emailing back and forth about different entrees, and Dad headed to the store for a few whites, and downstairs to the basement to pick a red.

Since we had such filling dishes, we started the experiment one evening and had to finish it at lunch the next day, so you'll see some outfit changes. But as Dad said

"Who would complain about having to continue a wine experiment? I'll get the glasses!"

So here are the dishes we had. Mom said to use the denim place mats because the "contrast looks so nice!" Love my parents for enjoying my homework! We're fish people, so this was kind of a "surf and grape" weekend:

Salmon with asparagus salad

For this salad, we also made a dressing that was mayonnaise with fresh dill and a little soy sauce. I could have eaten that dressing with a spoon. 

I'll go more into this in the wine notes, but the rich salmon did some crazy stuff to the white wines- which was interesting because I always thought rich food was supposed to go with reds. 

Spiced shrimp with snap pea salad

This shrimp was mildly spiced with Old Bay spice, and the snap peas are just fresh (the way God intended them- you heathens that cook these things. Ew). My parents added balsamic dressing to it, but I liked the way the shrimp stood out on its own, and I loooove the sweetness of the snap peas. 

Which was nasty with the red and the chardonnay. More on that later. 

Wild Haddock with rice and mushrooms

I had never tried wild haddock before, but if it comes out of the water- I will try it. It was a meaty fish, and with rice and mushrooms to round out our meal it was really filling. 

This dish was complimenting, but it left the wine alone for the most part.

Here you can see the dressing, and that Dad loved the shrimp

Before chow-down, from my angle.
Look at all those wine glasses!
Party with the parents :) 

About The Wines:

Cake in a bottle? Maybe not...

My mother actually found this one- she said she simply couldn't leave it at the store: "It jumped right into my cart!"

It's called Angel Food from Cupcake Vineyards. It's a 2012 from California, a mixed white variety. The producer states that it should have light green apple flavors and vanilla that combine to give the taste of actual angel food cake! 

It did not have the super-sweet quality one would expect. In fact, the vanilla flavor really hid until combined with the spicy shrimp. The moment it was mixed with the shrimp spice it was like BAM it finally tasted like the cake! Before this the acid of tree fruit was almost over whelming on the nose and the tongue- to the point my red-wine-loving father didn't almost refused to include it in the tastings!

Move aside, Vanna White.

The second wine is a Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay from 2012. If you've been watching my blog closely, you'd notice that we tasted the Riesling from this same company a few weeks back. 

But this is their Chardonnay- my mother is showing it off with a bite of shrimp, which it tasted weird with. This wine, full of the apple and some bright spice (my dad thought nutmeg, but I was leaning more to a Indian spice feeling) tasted best with the Haddock fish dish- because, as I said above, the haddock/mushroom/rice really allowed the wine to be what it was by itself. The spicy shrimp overwhelmed the spice of the wine, and the sweet of the peas made the wine sour. It did taste really nice with the rich salmon though- the meaty fish going up against the powerful citrus aromatics going on with this Chardonnay. 

As you can see in this picture, all of Dad's is gone.
He liked it a quite a bit!

The third wine we had was a Chateau Morrisette Cabernet Franc, 2013. It was mostly Cabernet Franc, but mixed also with Cab Sauv and Petit Verdot with a touch of Merlot.

It was said to have a lot of raspberry and strawberry with red currants. There was a lot of raspberry, which just TERRIBLE with the spice of the shrimp! I thought reds were supposed to go with spicy things, but I guess not. It also didn't go very well with the salmon, as it was all too rich together.

It went with the sweet snap peas again, but it was best with the haddock and rice- since it was allowed again to stand on its own with all its complexities.


This was a lot of fun to experiment with all these wines and dishes, especially since Mom and Dad were so into it and helping me out. We played around with the way wine tasted and changed depending on what foods and spices went with it. Even experienced wine drinkers like my parents learned a few things about the way the food could change the wine flavors. It was a good Easter all around!