Wine-pairing dinner

On Wednesday, Ben and I went to Circle Bistro on Washington Circle for a wine-pairing dinner hosted by the wine store in Dupont, Best Cellars. It was really good. There were a few setbacks to the night, including a huge rainstorm and resulting traffic, and Ben did his usual "I'll give them FIVE minutes and I'm leaving to get a hamburger" when the start of the dinner was delayed about 20 minutes. I knew that could end in disaster, because the first course was scallops (or, A scallop) and he sure wasn't going to eat that! But the food did come, and the bonus was that I had already paid before we got there, an all-inclusive price. AND it was a four-course meal, with two wines to taste with each course! And not just taste, mind you, they poured a good 3 ounces of each wine. And they equipped us with tasting note sheets, with names and descriptions of each wine and space for me to write things, which in the end was mostly things like "Ben likes, Jen doesn't like," and "Jen LOVES, Ben HATES."

Anyway, the managers of the wine store did an intro on the region we were tasting from--the western vineyards, like chateauneuf and die.

Then finally we got food. Scallops with pistachios and a cauliflower cream. Two white wines, Ben said he couldn't taste either of them. So I tasted them for him. The wine folks gave all sorts of flowery descriptions about the wines, but what I remember is that the first was flowery and the second one smelled like applesauce and was much better with the food.

The second course was ravioli with pulled pork and swiss chard. It was awesome. Two red wines with that course, the first one actually made me sneeze when I tasted it. Ben liked that one.

The third course was a braised short rib, which I sacrificed (mostly) for the love of my meat-eating husband, since he very graciously gave me his scallop. :) There were two more red wines with that, neither of which I really remember, and I told the guy when he came to ask what we thought, "I don't know if it's just the fact that we're getting to the end, but both of these taste the same to me." He made some comment about how wonderful that was, and how the "next step" is "pulling out the different flavors and distinguishing the varietals." It's quite exciting, for him. Ben rolled his eyes several times during dinner, this being one of them.

We didn't finish any of the third-course wines, because I was tipsy and Ben couldn't because he was driving. The dessert was this baked apple pastry thing with ice cream and a tissue-paper-thin round slice of apple, with the star-shaped holes in the center and everything. I thought that was cool; I have no idea how you would cut something that thin. Probably with a machine. Anyway, there was a really sickeningly sweet muscat, and a very good sparkling dessert wine to go with that. Of course I don't remember the names of any of the wines, but hey, that's what my notes are for!

In January, they're having a champagne-tasting dinner, which I will definitely look into.