Cheers and Clinks :D

Hello bloggy dosts,

I was amongst the lucky few bloggers from Kolkata to be invited to an afternoon of wine tasting and luncheon, sponsored by Four Seasons wines in collaboration with Oasis Restaurant. The event cum bloggers' meet was held on the 28th of July at Oasis restaurant, Park Street, Kolkata. Seven bloggers including me had gathered for a very informative and enjoyable session of wine tasting and its pairing with food. Here are a few highlights and things I learnt from the event-

The invite for the event (couldn't help sharing it, it's so pretty :D)-

The ladies (and bloggers) who attended the event. (Yeah, am not in the collage, I forgot to add my pic :P)

What do women do when we are together? Yeah, you guessed that right,

We talk and we pose

L -R - Ayantika, Anupriya, Debiparna, Sayantani, Shamita, Sayani, I and Uparna

Okay, enough of our pictures. Now coming to the main event :P

Here is the menu-

The wines and food we tasted-

The Four Varieties of Wines we tasted-

Chenin Blanc-

Viognier-

Barrique Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon-

Blush-

The lovely Shamita Singha,  Miss India Earth 2001 and a wine enthusiast turned wine taster was our host for the afternoon, who taught us the this and that of wines, their tasting and how they can be paired with food.
She explained to us the four Ss of wine tasting- See, Swirl, Smell and Sip i.e. you enjoy the wine with your four senses.

The things that we learnt-
1) Wine is an agro product and not a spirit unlike other alcohols.
2) "White wine with white meat and red wine with red" is not entirely true. The pairing of wine with food is different for each palate. White wines generally go well with lighter food and the reds taste better with spicier food.
3) Grape juice is originally colorless and the red wines get their color from the skin of the red grapes they are extracted from. The juice is kept with the skin for around 24-48 hours to extract the color out of it. This also gives the red wine its characteristic acidity and complex flavor which is from the tannin extracted from the skin.
4) There are three varieties of wine classified on the basis of colors- White, Rosé and Red. The rosé too gets it color from the skin, but it is left with the juice for lesser hours. Hence, the lesser intensity of the reddish tinge.
5) The date on the wine bottle is not the date when it was bottled but the date when the grapes were harvested.
6) Wine should be ideally served at room temperature, the European standard room temperature. So if you are in India, make sure you serve it chilled (for as you know our room temperatures are no where close to the European room temperatures).

All the seven of us had a great time getting to know each other and tasting the wonderful food and the wines. Special Thanks to Shamita Shingha, our host ; Mr. Akshay Gopal and Mr. Peter Mitter from Four Seasons and Mr. Pratap Darayani from Oasis for the extremely enjoyable event.

P.S.- Not all the photographs are mine, some of them are shared from Anupriya and Debiparna. Thanks to the two of you. Click on the images for a larger view.

Till next.
Love
Swarnali