It was the eve of a minor surgical procedure that was to keep me off my feet for four to six weeks. What was I to do? Naturally, I invited friends over for meal-worthy charcuterie board to chill, try out some wine ... and to keep my mind off the knife. What would you have done?

While there is no one “recipe” for putting together a charcuterie board, I invite you to visit Cocoa & Lavender to see what I did. It might give you some ideas, and you might have some to share with me! What would you add to a charcuterie board that I omitted?

The wine of the evening was a 2017 Patricia Ortelli Blanc from Château la Calisse. It was highly recommended to me as the perfect wine to accompany a charcuterie board, although I honestly didn’t expect it (a white wine) to hold up to some of the more intense items on the board. In the end, it paired really well with every single morsel on the board — from the venison rillettes, to the chicken liver mousse with... [...]