Meet at Chester's for Hors d'Oeuvres?

Before we decided to spend the last 4 years of our lives learning about wine, we found wine lists at restaurants to be really intimidating. Now, we love looking at them and seeing what we can find! If you look at the restaurant wine list and aren't sure what to make of it, we'd like to start giving you some ideas.

The other evening, we went to one of our favorite local restaurants, Chester's Chophouse, for an appetizer and a glass of wine. If you haven't had their calamari, you absolutely should, and that's what we ordered to share. Seafood is traditionally a white wine food, and Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre, France (in the Loire Valley) is a traditionally seafood-loving wine. We ordered the Phillippe Girard Sancerre from the by-the-glass menu, and we thought it was lovely. It smells and tastes like lemon citrus, but with a definite mineral quality to it as well (not as fruity as Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand typically is). It is palate-cleansing in a pleasant way, with a little apple flavor on the end, and we really enjoyed it.

We also wanted to try another wine with the calamari, and since Chardonnay is a very popular white wine, we went ahead and ordered the Banshee Chardonnay from Sonoma off the by-the-glass list. This one was also a delightful Chardonnay, creamy but not buttery like some California Chardonnays, with green apples and pears and some slight vanilla notes. This is an easy-drinking, smooth Chardonnay that we really enjoyed.

So now we add in the calamari! Chester's fries their calamari and then adds a sweet chili glaze that is undeniably delicious. It's got a little spiciness to it, but not too much (Katie personally does not like spicy food, but this amount of spicy is great).

Though we enjoyed the Sancerre on its own, with the sweet chili glaze on the calamari, the Sancerre loses its fruitiness and becomes more tart. The Sancerre even makes the calamari seem a little spicier. Overall, the Sancerre is not the right wine to pair with this calamari.

The Banshee Chardonnay stood up better, and the smoothness of the wine went great with the slight spicy of the calamari. We enjoyed drinking the Chardonnay with the calamari!

But then we thought, with the sweet and spicy on this calamari, what would be the best wine pairing? Riesling, with its sweetness, is touted to be a great wine with spicy and sweet food. We don't drink a lot of Riesling, as sweet wines are not typically our preference, but we decided to give this pairing a go and ordered the Von Schleinitz Riesling from the BTG menu.

Rieslings from Germany, like this one, tend to be varying levels of sweet. This one is slightly sweet, with notes of honey and mango and pineapple. Oddly enough, Riesling from Germany often also has some petrol notes to it, which sounds really odd but does not at all take away from the wine. Like noted above, we personally don't tend to drink sweet wine, just as a personal preference. BUT, we added this in with our calamari, and it was a DELIGHT. The combo together dampens down the sweetness of the Riesling and makes the wine come alive, tasting fuller and crisper and overall LOVELY. With calamari, we could drink this wine all day.

So, if you go to Chester's and get calamari, and you want a glass of wine to go with it, we highly recommend checking out the Riesling! You won't regret it!