Madison Food & Wine Show!

I loved the Madison Food & Wine Show; thanks, Dan, for such a great “date afternoon.”

Tickets for the show included a wine glass, reusable bag, and all food & wine samples.  This means we finally have real wine glasses, and I can stop drinking wine out of our water glasses. 🙂

We also received some coupons, brochures on food & wine pairings, coffee samples, and entered plenty of give-aways.

The Food

We found some great samples at various stands.  For instance:

(Sweet) Potato Salad, from a BBQ place opening in Madison in January 2010

Turkey, Feta & Spinach Meatloaf and Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes!

I stopped taking pictures after awhile for 2 reasons.  1)  All the samples were tiny.  Including pictures of all of them would make this the longest post ever.  2) I passed the camera on to Dan so that the foodie could be in the pictures.

I have only one complaint about the food.  There was so. Much. Cheese. And. Jams.  Don’t get me wrong, I love cheese.  And jam, for that matter.  But I was hoping to get a wider variety of food at the Food & Wine Show.

However, there were some winners.  Apple Smoked White Cheddar Cheese.  Cherry Pie Liquor.  (Seriously tasted like cherry pie.)  Maple Cream.  Some stellar teas.  Squash Soup.  Artisanal Chocolates.

One really great find came from a new, small company.  This was the only food item that I actually bought.  Tera’s Whey is a rGBH-free whey protein powder.  They get all of their whey from small local farms.  The plant the powders are produced in is “green,” and made with sustainable materials.  And check out these nutritional stats:

I sampled the acai berry and the fair trade dark chocolate mixes at the Show, and liked them a lot.  I really wanted to buy one of their 12 oz. containers, especially because they had a special price for the Food & Wine Show, but I unfortunately didn’t have enough cash.  So instead, I got 4 single-serving packets:

Acai berry, fair trade dark chocolate, wolfberry, and yumberry.

I definitely plan on enjoying one of these after my 15K tomorrow!

The Wine

Only recently have I started to like wine.  However, I still don’t know what exactly I like.  The Show, then, was the perfect way for me to figure it out.  We tried lots of great samples, and really struggled to decide which wines to buy.

When I say struggled, I mean we may or may not have bought seven bottles of wine today.  Well, we won’t need to buy wine again for a long time.  And maybe we’ll get to take some Wisconsin wine with us to New York. 🙂

First up:  Door County Winery. These two were the easiest wines to decide to buy!

Hallowine is a “sweet apple wine spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.”  It is meant to be served warm, which Dan thought was weird.  I, however, thought it was excellent warm.  In keeping with the season, this will likely be one of the first bottles we open.

Door County Red Christmas Wine is 60% cherries, 40% white grapes.  An unconventional red wine, yes, but the perfect mixture of sweet and tart. Loved it.

From Purple Feet Wines:

Quinta do Noval LB Finest Reserve Port. We tasted this paired with a Cashew Caramel Chocolate because it had been recommended to us.  Neither Dan nor I thought we liked red wine.  As it turns out, we do like red wines, we’ve just been trying the wrong ones.  This wine was very smooth, and the best red I’ve ever tasted, so buying a bottle of this was another easy decision.

We actually lucked out and got the second-to-last bottle of the Quinta do Noval, too.

One bottle from Weggy Winery:

Weggy Blue, a semi-sweet white wine with an intriguing complexity.

And finally (kind of): Phillips Wine Company.  Their stand was huge.  They took up four booths!  We found some winners, but unfortunately not all of them were being sold today.  We did get:

Von Stiehl’s Naughty Girl. Bought because A) It was my other favorite red wine of today and B) I like the label on the bottle.  🙂

Chocovine. This is the only one I didn’t get a chance to sample.  I was so intrigued by it, though, that I decided we had to get a bottle. It is a Cabernet blended with dark chocolate.  This one may get opened soon, too, because I’m so curious!

I said “finally” on the last winery not because it was the last bottle we bought, but because our last bottle isn’t technically a wine:

Raspberry Tart Ale from New Glarus Brewing Company. While it is technically an ale, it tastes more like a mix between a sparkling wine and a very light-tasting beer.  Yum!

Oops! I just realized I never blogged yesterday’s lunch or today’s dinner.  But didn’t you have more fun reading about the Food & Wine Show? 😉

Giveaway: Want to win some Chobani yogurt?  Trust me, I’m pretty sure you do.  Go here to enter an amazing Chobani giveaway!