What Could Be More Fine?
We held our fifth annual Girl Scout cookie wine tastings this past weekend. As usual, we had a great time. How can you not have fun when you’re combining Girl Scout cookies and wine?☺
We started out by tasting each wine paired with traditional wine-friendly appetizers (cheese, crackers and fruit). We then embarked on the wine and cookie pairing, tasting Wine 1 across all of the cookies and comparing notes before moving on to Wine 2.
The Wines
In two separate tastings, we tasted nine wines, all made by WineShop At Home and all made from California grapes:
- Petit Cadeau Semi-Seco Sparkling – This sparkling wine offers a nice balance of sweetness and acidity, with aromas of green apple, pear, flowers, orange and anise.
- Grand Cadeau Rosé Sparkling – This beautiful wine features aromas and flavors that include orange blossom, raspberry, watermelon and white flowers.
- Milano Cellars 2012 Muscat Canelli – This wine, that I affectionately think of as liquid gold (even though it’s not gold) has aromas of fresh rose, white flowers, papaya and mango.
- Table White – Our Table White is nice light wine made up of Chardonnay (85%) and Viognier (15%). It’s perfect for brunch or a picnic.
- Milano Cellars 2012 Malvasia – This yummy white has notes of peach, apricot, white currant, rose and citrus.
- Lumiere de Vie Reflexion – An easy-drinking Rosé that has a nice sweetness to it.
- Milano Cellars 20013 Dolcetto – A berry party in your mouth, this chilled red wine is quite a treat.
- Talmage Cellars 2012 Cabernet Sauvignon – This wine gives you a lot of berry, coupled with pepper and toasted oak.
- Somersville 2011 Red Meritage – This blend of Merlot and Cabernet is a big, bad, mature red that has aromas of leather, tobacco, vanilla, pepper and clove.
The Cookies
We tasted eight Girl Scout cookies:
- Savannah Smiles – Lemon-flavored dusted with powdered sugar
- Thank U Berry Munch – Cranberries with white fudge chips
- Do-Si-Do – Peanut butter sandwich cookie
- Tagalong – Layer of peanut butter covered in chocolate
- Samoa – Toasted coconut, caramel and chocolate
- Trefoil – Traditional shortbread
- Dulce de Leche – Cookie with milk caramel chips
- Thin Mint – Mint-flavored covered with chocolate
The Results
Cookie-friendliest Wines
The wines that worked with the most cookies were the Lumiere de Vie Reflexion, the Milano Cellars Muscat Canelli and the Milano Cellars Dolcetto. The pairing guideline of serving a wine that is sweeter than the dessert definitely came into play here.
Wine-friendliest Cookies
The cookies that worked with the most wines were the Samoas and the Savannah Smiles. However, because lemon is not a subtle flavor, the Savannah Smile got some strong negative votes on some of the pairings. In fact, it was both the favorite and the least favorite when paired with the Petit Cadeau Sparkling.
Cookie-un-friendliest Wine
The wine that worked least well with the cookies was the Malvasia, perhaps because it wasn’t sweet enough.
Wine-un-friendliest Cookie
No surprise, the cookie that worked least well with the wines was the Thin Mint. Most of the wines seem to bring out the mint flavor so strongly that the cookie tastes like you’re eating a breath mint. Weird. The good news is we found that the Thin Mint was bearable with all the reds as well as with the Rosé.
Wrapping Up
The takeaway here is that it is a lot of fun to spend time with friends pairing wines with a particular food group.
If you’ve done any special wine pairings, including cookie pairings, I would love to hear about your experiences.
