When You Actually Put It In the FoodBy Deirdre Bourdet
Some may consider the deliberate pouring of wine into anything other than a drinking vessel or eager mouth a shameful, wasteful act. While I see their point, wine-based cooking also happens to be one of the most delicious, easy, and traditional techniques for creating wine-friendly food. A splash of red to deglaze your meat searing pan, a dash of white to loosen up those all-too-quickly browning onions, and you've suddenly added worlds of flavor, depth, and sophistication to your creation.
Then there are the truly wine-based recipes (coq au vin, boeuf bourguignon, moules marinière, etc.) where the wine takes center stage. Typically there is a great deal of reduction involved--simmering the wine with other ingredients to concentrate flavor and reduce the volume of liquid to a thicker, more sauce-like consistency. These recipes make you confront the question of which bottle to use head-on, because the quality of the wine reduction really sets the tone of the dish.















































Zinfandel's
more passionate adherents got some wind knocked out of them in 2002, when
the premium wine grape they described as "America's own"
turned out to be European - and from a never-heard-of-it neighborhood
to boot. 











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