Say "cheese" (and wine)

Last year my husband and I hosted a wine/cheese fête at out little apartment. All of our guests brought amazing wines and even had a friend who works at a cheese company bring some of the most amazing Spanish cheeses. We had so much cheese and wine leftover for weeks, and of course, I didn't mind- I can live off these two! Anyway, we had a such a blast, I thought it would be nice to give some ideas for having your own cheese and wine night. Hopefully, we'll be having our 2nd annual one soon!


First off, I am no wine nor cheese connoisseur, so I cannot give you any pairing ideas, but I can cheat! What you do is, go online and find a website that gives you a list of pairings. They are all over the place! I also wrote on my own chalk-board painted tray the instructions knowing I would not remember what to do.

For the cheeses, I went to Home Depot and bought me a piece of slate, which is a few bucks, and placed the cheeses there. I wrote the names of each cheese with chalk ink on it and anything else you may want to add. I had some delicious chocolate spread and fig spread; add some cute little knives, and voila!

Chalk board paint was my best friend for this party. I painted tiles and this is where I wrote the names of the wines.

What other things can you have besides the cheese and wine? Glad you asked. We had nuts, grapes, olives or tapenade, jamon serrano, a variety of crackers, as I mentioned before, several spreads, like fig. We also had some friends bring some freshly baked lavash bread and hummus! It was amazing!

Now, I would recommend going wine tasting and seeing how it's led and done before trying it, but if not, it's no biggie!

Some tips: I would suggest having someone do the pouring so that we won't have drunk people at the end of the night. Have someone else give instructions. Also, don't be afraid to ask friends to bring stuff. I did an international wine theme. You can have people bring only California wines...only Italian...whatever, but you must assign, otherwise, you'll have three of the same wines. I asked everyone to bring a wine and a snack. If that is too much, have one group bring a few wines and another the snacks. Have about 5-6 wines to pair with the cheeses, and if you have less people, do a smaller amount, otherwise you'll be having grilled cheese sandwiches for the next month! Lastly, don't worry about being an expert. Go online and cheat. There are tons of resources and ways to learn how to host one of these parties. This is for fun! The point is, have fun and enjoy each others' companies. sante!