My own little wine pairing at Notaviva Vineyards

Oh yummy, yesterday I went to Notaviva Vineyards in Purcellville, VA. They are on my Virginia Wine tours and I have become friends with the owners Steve and Shannon Mackey. I am now an official groupie of Steve and Shannon. If you haven't heard, the building of their vineyard and tasting room is being featured on HGTV every Saturday morning for 8 episodes until the middle of November. I have brought several tours there and love their wines, their tasting room, the music and their hospitality and highly recommend people stopping in to say hello, taste and buy some wine.

Anyway, my parents were visiting from Frankfort, New York and my dad is an excellent cook and my mother is an excellent baker. Being from Italian descent, the Italian dishes and cookies flow freely when they come to visit. Anyway, we went out to see Steve and Shannon and I actually brought some of my mother's cookies to pair with their wines. Hey, they were good. My mom made a chocolate meatball cookie that really paired well with the Cab Franc. I pasted the recipe below. They also sell a Raspberry Merlot, made by the incredible Doug Fabbioli their wine consultant, which is a scrumptious dessert wine. This is a perfect pairing with the chocolate cookie but alas they were out. I also paired a lemon coconut cookie with their Believe dessert wine (a tintaco grape in the port style) and a pumpkin spice that I thought went reallly well with their Dream Chardonnay.

Anyway, I don't have all the recipes for the cookies yet... but here is the chocolate meatball one.

Chocolate Meatball Cookies


1 dark choc. Cake mix
½ cup oil – Wesson or Crisco
½ cup water
2 eggs
2 cups flour
Optional – chocolate chips, toasted chopped walnuts or raisins. (Put in as many as you would like.)

Mix all ingredients in one bowl. Dough will be stiff. Add optional ingredients. Shape into small balls. Place on cookie sheets sprayed with PAM.

Bake 350 degrees for 10 – 12 minutes.

Cool cookies.

Dip cookie into choc or vanilla glaze after its cool.

Glaze

2 ½ cups of conf. Sugar
6 tbls milk
1 tsp vanilla

if want choc. Glaze add unsweetened cocoa to your taste.


I know it is not purely from scratch because it has a cake mix as a base but if you want to be really adventurous omit the box and make your own chocolate scratch base. My mom is going to send the pumpkin spice cookie recipe and the sesame cookie recipe. I will be sure to post when I get them.

Anyway, happy baking and why not have a glass of wine to do your own pairing.

Chow!
Andrea