For many across the United States, Easter Brunch is a family tradition. Two or three – and sometimes more – generations gather, the cooks of the family outdo themselves and everyone enjoys the feast. Whether plain or fancy, Easter Brunch deserves to be served with a wine worthy of the food and company, and – with a little know-how – picking the perfect Easter Brunch wine can be a snap.
Two aspects of Easter Brunch make selecting the perfect wine different – though not more difficult – than most meals. First, the Easter Brunch menu can be primarily breakfast foods, primarily lunch foods, or a mixture of both. Even dinner dishes may sneak into the mix. Second, Easter Brunch may have two or three main courses rather than one. The diversity of Easter Brunch puts the focus on versatile wines that complement a range of dishes and those wines are where perfect matches will be found.
An Easter Brunch featuring breakfast foods like fruit salad, eggs Benedict, scrambled eggs with smoked salmon, waffles, pancakes, hash browns, bacon, sausages, and hot cross buns or scones takes wine pairing to a place it rarely goes, but one where wine can really showcase the foods. While a few white wines and even a couple of reds can pair well with this style of Easter Brunch, the best match is the most elegant – champagne!
As Easter fast approaches I get excited at the prospect of having a houseful of friends and family that have been fasting for the last 30 hours that I can lovingly overfeed!
I love soccer so I get really excited when I go to visit my dad in
London where it’s soccer season all year long. England as you probably
know has an undying passion for the sport, they treat it less as a game
and more as a way of life. For example, on a sold out night at
Emirates Stadium after Arsenal scores the crowd collectively expenses
100 times the world’s energy output for a day in the 30 seconds after
the goal. Like baseball or basketball in the US, football in the UK
permeates the culture – it’s everywhere. It has both a light and dark
side, and can go from having fun with your mates to total warfare very
quickly.
Perennial bulbs such as daffodils, tulips, and lilies bring about some of springtime’s best qualities - all making for exceptional cut flowers as well. Even wintertime’s brisk and chilly climate can provide glimpses of floral beauty with Hellebores heralding the coming spring and giving the gardener a glimpse of what is to come. When all things become new again, unthawing from winter’s chill, consider lilies for an accent and spark of year to year blooms for the home and garden.
Easter is almost here and while many of us are planning the main meal, whether that's brunch or dinner, we can't forget about treating the kids (or adults) to something sweet for breakfast while they are hunting for those eggs.