I was recently invited to a wonderful wine tasting event by Four Seasons Wines at Royal Orchid hotel on Old Airport road which was hosted by Ginger Claps. The blogger’s meet was hosted by ex-Miss India Shamita Singha who explained to us about how to taste the different wines, how to pair wines with different types of food and basically answered all our questions about wines!
Shamita introduced us to different kinds of wines that Four Seasons has to offer like The Blush or Rose (a sweet fruity wine), the Barrique Reserve Shiraz (full bodied garnet wine) and a lovely Sauvignon Blanc (a zesty fruity white wine). She had a lot of interesting facts for us too including information about the temperature to serve the white and blush wine (8-10 degrees Celsius) and the temperature to serve the red wine (16-18 degrees Celsius).
Shamita Singha asked us to pair the Blush/Rose wine with Chicken Satay for Non Vegetarians and Grilled vegetables for Vegetarians. I love Chicken Satay and it was great to see it being cooked to perfection at the Royal Orchid hotel. It complimented the Rose wine very well!
The event was not like a promotional talk of Four Seasons Wines but a way to interact with other food, travel and fashion bloggers in Bangalore. It was great to see some familiar faces like the wonderful home baker Monica Manchanda of Sin-A-Mon and Karthik Shetty of Gastronomical G-spot …
… it was also good to meet some new bloggers like Shalini Gupta Chopra of Stylish by Nature dot com and Ankita Sinha of AnkiOnTheMove.com who blog very well about fashion, lifestyle and travel.
The chef at Royal Orchid made a wonderful feta, apple and lettuce salad with an orange dressing which tasted well with the white wine. Shamita Singha and Shalini Gupta helped the chef in creating this salad.
The ambiance at the pool side at Royal Orchid hotel was perfect for a lazy Sunday afternoon live cook-out and you could enjoy the wine and salad at your leisure like I did..
After having couple of wines, I tried my hand at cooking the Pomodoro Basilica Sauce which was supposed to be the dressing for the BBQ chicken. It was fun being egged on by my friends and my wife to cook the sauce very well!
I love barbecuing chicken so it was good to get an opportunity to help the chef by turning around the chicken pieces on the barbecue as he was preparing the coal smoked chicken breasts. Notice the happiness on my face? 😉 It is just not the wine but the happiness of preparing some yummy food!
We paired the Red wine with Coal Smoked Chicken Breast with a Pomodoro Basilica Sauce and it tasted very good. The combination was not just good to the eyes but also good to the stomach!
The chef also used Four Seasons wine to saute the fried vegetables for the vegetarians in the house – he needn’t have taken the trouble as there were hardly any!
Finally the dessert was mouth watering Hazelnut and Chocolate Mousse which was just melting in our mouths! It was a sweet end to a wonderful afternoon spent together with wonderful wines, yummy food and good company!
Here is a short video created by Ginger Claps about the Four Seasons Wines Live Cookout in Bangalore -Â http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NN0mhXMMnSE