A few weeks ago I was making dinner for my parents. I was preparing pork tenderloin, brussels sprouts and roasted potatoes and they asked me what wine to serve…my Dad had referred to his Hugh Johnson Pocket Wine Book for some pairing ideas but Hugh didn’t specifically have a recommendation for pork tenderloin. He did have a great suggestion for Coq au Vin, however: “In an ideal world one bottle of Chambertin in the dish, two on the table.” One day I may be so lucky…but in the meantime, without Hugh’s blessing, I recommended Pinot Noir to go with the pork tenderloin. Pork and Pinot is usually a good match, plus I gotta plug Pinot Noir when I can.
So my brother brought over a couple of bottles of Pinot from his cellar and my Dad pulled one out, too. The Pinot worked lovely with the pork tenderloin. We drank 3 Oregon Pinot Noirs: Stoller Vineyards which was outstanding with the pork (and on its own for that matter;) Lachini Vineyards Estate which is an expensive bottle but unfortunately it had a slight, unintentional effervescent quality; and Erath, a commonly found and dependably good Pinot.
Back at my house we recently enjoyed a more unusual wine and food pairing. Bacon, eggs and Pinot. It was breakfast for dinner night at our house so we made mushroom and onion omelettes, bacon and French toast. There was an opened bottle of our house Pinot (Las Brisas Carneros) so I poured myself a glass. And surprise, surprise, what a match our Pinot was for the bacon! And the mushroom omelette too. In hindsight, the match is really not surprising. After all, a dish in the a la bourguignonne style incorporates lardons (bacon pieces,) onions and mushrooms cooked in a Burgundy red wine (Pinot Noir) sauce.
If you’ve had other food and Pinot Noir pairings–unusual or not–that have worked well for you, we’d love to hear them! And, by the way, if you find yourself in a bind not knowing what wine to serve with your food (or vice versa) Natalie MacLean has a great little Food & Wine Matcher gadget on her website.
April 29, 2009 at 9:35 am
I’m glad I looked at your blog, Kathryn. Wonderfully written! I am impressed…We have been in a wine group for over 10 years and have enjoyed it immensely, but I still do not have a good idea of what wine to serve when I cook dinner. Our wine group focuses more on all the aspects of the wine–legs, smell, color–my process is to move the glass toward me that I like and the one I don’t like away. We generally have 5 different types of wine. Eventually, I come up with the wine I like the best. I am not good at the particulars. I either like it or I don’t.(we usually have cheese, crackers and bread while we are sampling and then we have a light dinner and add another bottle of wine or we each “grab” the bottle we might have preferred during the tastiing.) I suggested to Kathryn while she was here visiting us and cooking (!) that she might want to mention food in some of their writings, that there may be other people who are not quite sure of what wines might go better with a dish than others. I hope you continue to mention food at times in your writiings. I know you are making Pinot Noir, but even bringing in foods that go with Pinot Noir would be a help to many, I would think. It certainly would be a help to me.