Wine Tasting Badge, Step 3
Step 3 of any badge is to share what you’ve learned with others. To complete Step 3 of the Wine Tasting Badge, we hosted a wine pairing party that consisted of 4 curated wines and appropriately paired snacks. When I hear “wine pairings” I usually think of a full 3-course dinner, but we wanted to keep the party lighter and a bit easier on us. Below you can see the pairings we chose. We were inspired by the research we did in Step 1 and by the many beautiful infographics about wine pairing on Pinterest. We found cute mini chalkboard signs to display our pairing information.
Pairing 1: A white acidic wine with spicy food
For this pairing we chose a white wine I purchased during Step 2 of this badge – visiting our local winery. For a spicy pairing we thought about going with either Asian of Mexican food. We kept it simple with chips and salsa, always a crowd pleaser!
Pairing 2: Dry red wine with cheese and crackers
Dry red wine can be paired with creamy cheese. Since we are a vegan-heavy bunch, we went with a nut-based cheese for this pairing and set out a variety of cracker options.
Pairing 3: Rosé with fruit
I picked up this rosé from Whole Foods and paired it with cherries and apples. Rosé was the wine I learned the most about in Step 1 since it is the wine I knew least about going into this badge. I enjoyed sharing my newly acquired rosé wine facts, especially when one of our guests mentioned it was less sweet than they expected a “pink” wine to be.
Pairing 4: Dessert wine with chocolate
This pairing was most impressive to us on our Step 2 trip to Burgdorf’s. There we had a very sweet raspberry wine with dark chocolate and it tasted amazing. Our friend Kayla picked up this delicious cherry wine on a recent trip to Connecticut. She also brought chocolate covered almonds and I pulled out some “milch” chocolate from our recent trip to Germany.
We had a lot of fun with gathering each pairing on a large wooden cutting boards. This helped show the pairs visually since each pairing was on its own board. Kate made chalkboard signs with the information about the wine and the snack to show our guests how we put together the pairings.
At the party we shared what we had learned by telling guests about our experience with steps 1 and 2 of the badge including what we discovered on our trip to Burgdorf’s and the difference between blush and rosé. If you want to see how we set up our wine pairing party and what we thought of the wines, check out the video below.
In our next post, we’ll share ideas for how you can complete the wine tasting badge in a weekend!
Have you completed this badge? Do you know other fun facts about wine? We want to hear from you! Comment below, send us a message, post on Facebook, or tag us on Instagram at @badges.for.all or #badgesforall.
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