Fancy Recipe, Everyday Wine

Wine is often associated with the fanciest of dinners. While Coke goes well with Mac & Cheese, it seems a little strange to drink it with Coq au Vin. At the same time, it also seems weird to drink a glass of wine with Mac & Cheese. We’ve been playing with that this past year, and exploring wine with everyday meals, but sometimes we still want to try a “fancier” recipe.

At the local farmer’s market, we can pick from a wide selection of locally grown produce, including several options for high quality meats. This gives us the opportunity to make some high quality meals at home, the most recent being Lamb in Mint Sauce. Its a simple recipe, but the sweet and herbal flavors of the mint, with the meaty, earthiness of the grass-fed lamb chops, along with some spicy radishes made for a complex meal. With the recipe in hand, selecting a wine for dinner was easy; the sweetness of the mint sauce seemed like it would be the driving flavor of the meal, so we picked a bottle of Pinot Noir from Oregon, expecting some strong fruit flavors, a little sweetness to match the sauce. Luckily, the wine we chose, a 2010 from Viridian, was as complex as the meal, with a flavor profile to match each bite.

The best part about the wine was how balanced it was, despite the layers of flavor. While it matched this meal well, it had enough going on that it would pair well with a wide range of dinners, make it a great “table wine”. It was also smooth enough to make it easy to finish the bottle after dinner. This is of note only because we’re often told that wines are either meant for sipping or for drinking alongside dinner. In this case, the Viridian Pinot Noir worked well at both.