William Pollard Jr | aka: Wild 4 Washington Wine

Open That Bottle Night - A great excuse for a Wine Pairing Weekend.  February 28th was Open That Bottle Night - I selected a bottle of wine I helped blend using barrel samples of Pinot Noir from R. Stuart winery in McMinville, Oregon. I was saving this bottle for a special occasion and knew it was likely time to open and drink. I hoped it had improved. "Blending wine is no task for mere mortals."   - William Pollard Jr.  Our Wine Pairing Weekend group decided Open That Bottle Night would be an appropriate occasion to pair our selected bottle of wine with something special as well. After some consideration, I decided North Carolina ribs would likely pair well with my special bottle of Oregon Pinot Noir. For this post I'll review the wine first, then provide the recipe, and wrap up with the results of this wine + food pairing. *Note: What is Open That Bottle Night? Wife and Husband columnists Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher invented Open That Bo...

It's All About Romance, Food + Wine Pairings. It's the second Saturday of February and time for Wine Pairing Weekend! February's iteration of Wine Pairing Weekend #winePW we are sharing our favorite romantic recipes with a wine pairing. Food + Wine shared with romance in mind on wine Pairing Weekend #9. Especially appropriate since it is Valentines Day. Our gracious host this month is Camilla of Culinary Adventures with Camilla . We are on twitter at 8 am Pacific/11 am Eastern today sharing our recipes for romance and wine pairings using #WinePW. You are invited to join us. It is an engaging, fun and passionate group of food and wine bloggers. A list of todays participants and links to their romantic recipes is at the bottom. Back to this months theme, Food + Wine = Romance My take on this months romance theme is more of a post romance recipe for revitalization. After the passion you need to fuel up for round two, or three. My choice is a Frittata wit...

Another Wine Pairing Weekend This months Wine Pairing Weekend #WinePW we were asked to share a New Years Resolution about a wine or wine region we would like to explore in 2015. I elected to learn more about the wines of Greece. My reasons are personal and are related to the passing of my step-grandfather who was from the island of Crete. Consider this post an homage in his memory. Having chosen Greece as a wine region, I doubted I would find any Greek wine in town. I was wrong. Happily, unexpectedly, surprisingly, one of the local wine shops had half a dozen Greek wines in stock. I selected a white wine to pair with the Avgolemeno Soup I wanted to make. Avgolemeno Avgolemeno is a traditional Greek chicken soup with an egg-lemon sauce. A soup I grew up eating at my grandmothers home. I'll admit that I was not a big fan the first time I tried it. My step-grandfather laughed at the face I made tasting the lemon in my chicken soup. Then he squeezed even more lemon juice ...

#WinePW Wine Pairing Weekend Holiday Entertaining! December is holiday festive party time! Our job this month is to create some great sparkling wine and appetizer pairings. If you see this early enough, please join us December 13th at 8 a.m. Pacific Time. We’ll be chatting on twitter using #WinePW about our creative holiday sparkling wine pairings. We’d love to have you join us! Sparkling Wine and Appetizer Pairings. ~.~ This month I wanted to pair a Washington Sparkling wine with something I enjoy serving. I thought spicy prawns on a stick would be perfect. I chose wild shrimp for this recipe because they taste better. Thankfully, I found some medium sized wild shrimp which were perfect for an appetizer on a stick. Cooking time was minimal and could be done as guests arrive. If you don't like spicy you can omit or reduce the amount of chili used. Actually, I reduced the amount of chili for this recipe and I still sneezed like crazy when I was measur...