Open Note to Self

It's about me, right? There are many reasons for blogging about my food and wine interests; but the longer I do it the more I realize that foremost among them is that it's a great way to keep track of my own recipes and finds for future reference. So I'm going to take it a step further and try to get into the habit of jotting quick notes of wine and food I've tried that I want to come back to for future use. These notes to self will have less prose than some other posts and get right to the chase. But they are open--you too may find it useful if you're looking for a good wine or food tip to check out these notes. On this blog, I'll use the tag "WTBA" for "Wine to Buy Again" and "FTBA" for "Food to Buy Again. I'll also use more refined tags over on Diigo.

This first note to self was prompted by a recent visit to Pairings Wine and Food, when I sampled two very good wines that I'd love to have brought home. But alas, I was nearing the end of the month's wine budget and neither bottle fit into the short-term cooking plans, but I definitely like to enjoy more than a taste of these when the time is right! They are:

Hitching Post St. Rita's Earth Pinot Noir (reg price $37) It had been so long since I'd seen the movie Sideways, I'd forgotten that Hitching Post was the place they hung out frequently in their wine tasting adventures. After sampling this, I can see why they wanted to visit this place often! I'm thinking this might make a nice Easter wine. At the tasting, it was paired with Stonewall Kitchen Butternut Squash Pasta Sauce served on cheese ravioli--a good combo; in fact I'm going tag this pasta sauce to pick up too.

2005 Ceretto Zonchera Barolo (reg price $50, on sale til months end at Pairings for $40) Very enjoyable and approachable for a fairly young Barolo.

A Zin for Spiced Pork Tenderloin & Maple Chipotle Sauce

Gotta love hitting a food and win pairing just right. Saturday night's combo qualifies, so a quick post to report is in order.

In the mood for pork tenderloin, I came across this recipe I'd saved for it served with a maple chipotle sauce. It's pretty easy to make, just need to allow three hours for the pork to sit with the spice rub. The sauce has a nice combination of spice and sweet, with a bit more of the latter.

Now I suppose one could make a case for a Riesling, which does nicely with the three key elements here--pork, spicy and sweet. But I was more in the mood for red, and had a bottle of 2006 La Storia Zinfandel from California's Alexander Valley. This comes from Trentadue Winery. The wine is 88% Zinfandel, 12% Petite Sirah. It has a cherry fruit taste, a bit of spice and a nice vanilla finish. Thus it matched up nicely with the pork, the vanilla tones picking up the sweetness in the sauce, along with enough spice in the wine to stand up to the chipotle. A definite thumbs up to this pairing!