What's fun about having your own winery is getting to take a bottle (or three!) home and see what tastes the best with it.
This time we took a new 2008 Borra Members Reserve Petite Sirah that will be in our summer club shipment and tried to see if it would go with chicken.
I know any wine Nazi’s out there will be jumping off the walls at this potentially ridiculous combination of the most intense, dark varietal you can find with a lite white meat, but what’s life without a bit of experimentation?
In fact, the only reason for even attempting this fearful pairing was the spicy, molasses-laden Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce that was slathered all over legs and thighs. (Plus, we just couldn’t wait to see how the Petite was coming along.)
And the verdict…
The Petite on its own was lush and expectedly huge with great concentration and a muscular backbone of rounded tannins. We got flavors almost like those succulent juice that flows from the bottom of foil in which was resting a slow-roasted tri-tip. The finish was like someone shook a black cherry tree and filled oodles of baskets.
So the wine – the most important part of this experiment – was exciting and hard to stop drinking.
The pairing, on the other hand, got – as expected – a big fat “D.” Only the sauce gave this pairing a passing grade. Surprisingly, a quiver of asparagus spears were also on our plates, slightly blacked by the BBQ, which turned out to be a decent pairing. Nice to see that something actually works half decently with this wine-killer vegetable.
