One of the most educational things at the conference I went to was actually the wine tasting sponsored by Biltmore Estates, who has their own winery. Not sure what that says about me, but let's not analyze that, shall we?
They brought four wines: a Riesling, a Chardonnay, a Pinot Noir and and a Cabernet Sauvignon. We did a tasting of the wines to learn how to pair them with sweet, salty, bitter, sour and savory foods. It was surprising how what the food was paired with would make such a remarkable difference in how the wine tasted afterwards. For the sake of ease, we tasted each wine before and after tasting salt, table sugar, a walnut, lemon and cheese. For example, a sweeter wine like a Riesling was cloyingly sweet after biting into a lemon, but was more palatable after a taste of the table sugar.
Pretty much everything tasted better with cheese (the fat in cheese coats the taste buds), which apparently is why wine and cheese go so well together.
If you are ever in Asheville, swing by Biltmore and do a wine tasting!
