July 4th yesterday, and instead of heading to Santa Cruz Lori and I were home with a sick cat.  Not what we had planned, but we had to make the best of it.  So we watched some World Cup games, some baseball, just generally relaxed, and planned our own little barbeque.  A rack of ribs, corn on the cob, homemade cole slaw.  Lori’s got a great recipe for the slaw, which involves garlic powder in the sauce.  (If you’re interested, you should ask her.)  For the ribs we used some plum BBQ sauce that we made a year ago.  The recipe for that is on the Food and Wine Pairing page of the main website, and it was great with the ribs.

For wine, we pulled out a bottle of 2004 Peachy Canyon Winery Zinfandel, Old Schoolhouse Vineyard (Paso Robles).  Obviously, we decanted the bottle.  It took about 30 minutes to open up, then had everything:  great nose, fruit on entry, nice and chewy texture, good tannins on the finish.  Bite of ribs, sip of wine.  Rinse and repeat, to borrow from other instructions.

Good Zinfandel can age, and age well.  Maybe not the 20+ years for the high end reds, but this had everything I want in a wine, including the complexity and balance.  Better now than it was in the first few years after bottling.  Of course, you have to start with good zinfandel, and Peachy Canyon is a great winery to keep in mind for Zinfandel.  Always an enjoyable tasting experience too, if you get to Paso Robles.

I hope you all had a great holiday yourselves.

L’Chaim,

Larry