Wine for Your Weekend with Manchego Cheese

It’s almost Friday and you are already thinking about your weekend plans and perhaps which wines to purchase. Weekly, I post two recommendations for your weekend wine choices. However, for the next few weeks, I’ll be offering easy tapas recipes which are traditional to Spain’s Region of Murcia, “Home of the Sun”, an area to where I travelled in June and participated in a press trip in order to learn about and appreciate the culture and…wine! Paired with regional wines of Monastrell (many of which are distributed in the United States), these dishes shine as much as the sun! And each of my weekly recommendations are under $20. ~

This week’s recipe couldn’t be easier…or more satisfying (and add your own adjectives after you taste) because all three of the items were my (happy-hmmm, this reads as an oxymoron) demise during the week I was in Murcia!! Slices of Manchego cheese, a Spanish hard cheese made from sheep’s milk and which you can purchase at your grocery store or wine and cheese shop, and slices of Iberico ham (which may be more problematic to find in many areas, but try!) beautifully arranged on a plate and accompanied by Marcona almonds and a glass of Monastrell will be a perfect tapas before any meal, or let’s be honest, at any time! In fact my last euros were spent at the airport for Marcona almonds and if I had realized that I could take the ham home I would have done so!! (And I do have regrets about that because I actually did see someone stuff a huge Iberico ham which looked like a large ukelele in the overhead compartment…)

Although the picture above is from Spain, my delicious pairing at home with the almonds, ham, and cheese was…

**Bodegas Juan Gil Jumilla 2011 – Aerated for almost thirty minutes before sipping, this wine of 100% Monastrell was shared with friends who had never tasted the variety. There were rustic aromas of more earth than fruit and on the palate the wonderful structure along with the rich plums and gamey minerality led to a grand, lingering finish and satisfaction on the part of our guests (and me!). Vines grown in chalky and limestone soil and wine aged in French oak for twelve months help make this wine a keeper…and it’s readily available in the United States at your local wine shop. At around $15. this is an incredible value and those at Wine Spectator gave the wine 87 points in the September 30, 2013 issue~