Clos du Bois Rouge paired with Recipes from Katie Lee

I was a guest last month for the Clos du Bois Rouge launch at Cirque du Soleil-Kooza where I met Katie Lee, cook book author and ambassador for Clos du Bois Wines. In addition to talking about the show, our mutual love of Rosé wine in the summer and the new release of the 2010 Clos du Bois Rouge, she shared with me that she had paired some of her recipes with this new wine.

As I am always looking for something new to cook to change up our at-home dining, I was interested to hear that one of her favorite dishes with the wine was her BBQ chicken. If that wasn't intriguing enough, she also offered up a cookie recipe to go with the wine as well. As a native Texan, I am pretty sure that I know BBQ so I was curious to see what her recipe would be like as she is from West Virginia but now lives in The Hamptons. The marketing team was kind enough to send me a bottle of the wine and the dinner plan was on.

I had most of the ingredients already in my pantry so there wasn't too much shopping that I needed to do other than to buy dried cherries for the cookies and to get the chicken, both of which I got at Whole Foods along with some of their smoked potato salad and some fresh corn on the cob for the sides. I made the cookies, mixed up the dry rub and made the BBQ sauce in the morning so my evening would be a little bit smoother.

Later that evening, I got the chicken cooking, set the table and opened the wine. The 2010 Clos du Bois Rouge had pronounced aromas and flavors of fresh ripe plums, mixed berries and cherries with cocoa. It had a medium+ body, smooth ripe tannins and medium+ acidity. The wine was fresh and fruity and tasted great, especially for the approximately $15 price.

I took the chicken out of the oven as my husband walked in the door and dinner was served. We both agreed that this was a well done pairing by Katie Lee. If you are wondering why this red wine worked so well with chicken, it is because her BBQ sauce recipe had a really nice flavor balance, it was a more tangy style than the sweet and spicy that is so common around here. The tangy flavor is primarily from the acidity of the apple cider vinegar in the sauce which made the wine taste a bit more rich and the fruit flavors seem sweeter.

It was also really nice with the dried cherry and chocolate chunk cookies after dinner because the wine and the cookies both had a similar flavor profile and the slight bitterness of the dark chocolate and the sour cherry flavor in the cookies kept them from being overly sweet so that they did not detract from the wine's natural fruitiness.

I would recommend both the wine and Katie Lee's recipes, I found the directions easy to follow and felt that it would be affordable to do for a small group or just to have as I did for a nice dinner at home for two.

Click here for Katie Lee's Recipes

Lust Zinfandel 2007

My husband loves this wine so he purchased quite a few bottles at a recent Michael~David dinner that we had attended. Last night, I decided to open a bottle to serve with dinner. I was making a roasted southwestern pork tenderloin, sweet potato fries (w/ chipolte ketchup) and a salad consisting of baby lettuce (fresh from my garden) with strawberries, red bell peppers, red onions and walnuts tossed with a white balsamic-raspberry vinaigrette. This turned out to be a great pairing. It is a bold wine that really stood up to the strong chipolte seasoning while complementing the fruit flavors. I opened the bottle a 1/2 hour before I served it as I have found this wine to be more enjoyable when I do so. The Lust Zinfandel by Michael~David 2007 was a dark purple color with a ruby rim. It has intense aromas of very ripe mixed berries and baking spices-both allspice and ginger with hints of cedar. It has flavors of creme de cassis, milk chocolate and also more of the baking

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The Salta Tour 2012

Vine Connections and Pioneer Wine Company hosted a seminar and tasting event for Houston's wine trade and media at Backstreet Cafe yesterday. All but two of the wines were from the Salta Province of Argentina. Salta is the most northern wine region in Argentina lying close to the Bolivian border. The climate is very extreme due to the high altitude. Plantings start at 5,000 feet above sea level and climb to 9,000 feet, making these vineyards the highest in the world. The intense sunlight the area receives helps to create grapes with more anthocyanins, these are the color pigments which result in softer tannins, lower astringency and more intense flavor. The wines produced are extremely pure, concentrated and terroir specific. Torrontes Riojano which is considered the best of the three Torrontes clones is the most widely planted grape with plantings of Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon and Tannat increasing. The seminar started with a tasting of four Torrontes wines, three from diff

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