Wine with Barbeques
The quietest pleasures of life and we think of a backyard barbeque, the friendly banter of friends and neighbors and a grill roasting the food with everyone you love and care about around you. It affects everyone positively and even the simplest food and wine becomes a gourmet’s pleasure basket with a little bit of breeze and warm summer sunshine. The perfect occasion to serve the light fruity white wine chilled is to beat the heat served with green salads and a chilled cold meat platter. The perfect accompaniment of roasted barbequed food is a low in tannins red wine to finish with nice hearty pasta.
The summer wines all hail from the northerly regions whispering the cool winds and reminiscent of the frosts in winters, soothing in the heat of summers yet providing a warmth, the best of the north of England to mix with the summers to tease the summer and remind them of the winters.
English wines have been there for times immemorial but the quality of wines has improved only a short while back. The chalky Kent soil is identical to the one found in France in the region of champagne providing the world famous wine. The ones found in Germany and Alsace have a common absence of the oak but with important differences, the French ones are made in a distinctive French style- lots of alcohol, dry and full bodied, while the ones from Germany have an acrid sweetness to them and are low in alcohol content usually.
The common wines to go with barbeques are:
White wines
Pilton Manor, Dry Reserve 1996, Hugel, Fleur d’Alsace 1997 (Peckhams (Scotland)), Von Kesselstatt, Graacher Himmelreich Riesling Spätlese 1997
Red wines
L’If, Merlot/Carignan 1998, Rosemount, Shiraz/Cabernet 1998 Yarra Valley Hills, Pinot Noir 1997
The basic rule is reiterated here, the best way to choose a wine is to go along with the sense of the consumer, the sense and instinct are the best guides we have to wine.
Filed under: Wine & Food
