Wine & Cheese Tasting (Lockdown style…)
So, the time was November 2020. Part of the first big lockdown. Well, not the first lockdown but you know what I mean. I guess, Pre-Vaccine lockdowns. Post-Eat-out-to-help-out but Pre-It’s-safe-outside.
Anyway… it was a friend of mine’s birthday, and we always try to get together, but he’s about 12 billion miles away (on the other side of London) so it wasn’t easy, nor in fact, possible at this time, to get together.
So we decided to do a ‘virtual’ wine and cheese tasting. I found a couple of sites online we could get the necessary stuff in from, and we arranged a zoom call to do the tasting together.
Snowdonia Cheese Company
I write this with no incentive – no affiliate link/advertisement/etc – this is merely what I think. We both got the same stuff, so we could do the tasting a little like you would at a proper tasting evening (there was a wine shop we used to go to for this!).
We both got The Quintessential Hamper – which was 5 cheese and some chutneys for £35. In hindsight, trying to make our way through five whole cheeses was perhaps a mistake (and some might say, ‘Why would you even assume you had to do that? Surely you just want to taste some of each?’ but if you’d met me – you’d know… and if you’re curious, no I did not make it through all of them despite best efforts).
There was a Black Bomber, Green Thunder, Red Storm, Red Devil and Beechwood. Plus the chutneys, I don’t remember but I think I had one in the fridge up until recently… that’s not to say it wasn’t nice… I just, don’t eat chutneys that much.
It had come packaged well, and inside was a nice little hamper basket, filled with all our goodies.
The cheese were really, as expected. By far my favourite was the Black Bomber, but I do love a good cheddar. I’m not actually one that really goes in for flavoured cheeses, so the Green Thunder (garlic and herb) and the Red Devil weren’t really to my liking. The Red Storm (aged Red Leicester) was lovely, and I don’t recall what I thought of the Beechwood – but actually having said what I just said about flavoured cheese… I do love a smoked cheese so I suspect that got eaten fairly promptly.
But the whole thing was a wine and cheese night, so what about the wine?
Did we just go grab a few bottles? Well, that’s something you could have done, but my worry was – you wouldn’t get much of a tasting experience that way. Sure you’d have a great night, but it was the tasting we were after… so… enter:
Avino
Again, no affiliate links here so take my comments as you want – but it’s all genuine. I really liked this. And in fact despite saying “we really must do this again” I never have, but if I wanted to do a wine/cheese tasting evening with friends again – virtually or in person – I’d do it through these guys.
I can’t find the email confirmation, so I don’t know how much it was – I want to say around £50-60 but I am pulling that figure out of my memory which is useless, so it could have been £20-30 for all I know.
I tried to look them up online (avino.ai) but their website isn’t working – whether that’s a temporary glitch or they’re just shut down – I don’t know! (Sad times if they’re shut down, maybe I should have ordered again when I could!).
The premise was, they sent you wine in what looked like test tubes, and then you would sample each wine, make your notes, and then answering questions – before revealing the answers in a separate envelope. Very clever, and very enjoyable.
All in all, a great evening and I recommend you give it a go! (If Avino come back… if not, I’m sure you can just open 6 bottles, right? 🙂
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