Mel talked with Sarah Tracey, professional sommelier, and founder The Lush Life blog. The holidays are all about entertaining our friends and family and Sarah’s favorite way to do it is with fabulous wines and charcuterie boards.
Aldi appointed its first charcuterie board of directors and Sarah says we are here to give advice and help shoppers build their best boards with all the cured meats and the cheeses and the festive add-on and all your delicious charcuterie must haves.
Where do you start? Sarah likes to start with the wine. She says I am the wine whisperer on the board and if you know Aldi you know that they have an incredible selection of award-winning wines and a lot of them are under ten dollars. Sarah tells Emily she wants to make sure every board first has the perfect sipping companion, so she made some mini Pinot Noir boards. They are inspired by the William Wright Reserve Pinot Noir and that is her go-to lighter red. She pairs semi-soft milder cheeses and lighter meats that aren’t going to over-power the wine like the Emporium selection cranberry white cheddar, the Appleton Farms prosciutto are perfect with Pinot. Sarah says I just love the mini boards, they are perfect for social distancing if that is something you are doing this holiday and one in three of Aldi’s cheeses and half of their wines are award winners so you really can’t go wrong with anything in the store.
Cabernet Sauvignon is the rich, robust, fireplace wine that we all crave this time of year when the weather gets a little cold. Sarah says 30 Miles Napa Valley cabernet is awesome and it is really nice with more concentrated hard cheeses and savory meats like the Emporium Selection 1,000 day aged Gouda, and the Appleton Farms deli collection and again for the meats to the cheeses to the wines you can just pop into Aldi, pick it all up in a one-stop shop and make your life easier this time of year.
For more information go to Aldi.us./charcuterie
