With only a few weeks of peak barbecue season left and Labor Day weekend around the corner, there’s no better time to stock up on wines like this one that are equipped to handle a rack of ribs.
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Red wines and red meats go together so well that it’s tempting to think that anything goes as long as the colors match. If you’re a fan of leaner, drier reds from places like Italy or France, it’s helpful to know that they will not taste their best with barbecue sauce. With only a handful of fruity exceptions like valpolicella or Beaujolais, those combos are almost guaranteed to clash due to the ultra-dryness of most European classic reds and the sticky sweetness of most barbecue sauces.
Red wines from the Americas or the southern hemisphere are better equipped for barbecued ribs, chicken, or even BBQ-flavored chips because they taste so much riper and register as sweeter, even when their actual sugar content is almost as low.
Bold red blends from California are a great choice for barbecues because, in addition to tasting less dry and more fruit-forward, they align nicely in other dimensions as well. Most are quite intense in their concentration of flavor and almost all feature prominent oak flavors that harmonize with the smoky taste of barbecue sauce.
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Cheaper reds may acquire oaky flavor through the use of extracts or wood chips, but premium wines like this Sonoma red blend from Rodney Strong get their oak taste the old-fashioned way — by aging in newly toasted oak barrels. Here, grapes like merlot and cabernet sauvignon contribute a blackberry backbone while jammier malbec and zinfandel add a sweet black cherry component. The result is a robust blend that is juicy enough to handle ribs and all the other barbecue staples, but still dry enough for red wine lovers to sip on and enjoy by itself.
Rodney Strong Red
Sonoma County, California; 14.5% ABV
PLCB Item #96511
On sale for $18.99 through Aug. 31 (regularly $22.99)
Also available at: Canal’s in Mt. Ephraim, N.J. ($15.49; mycanals.com), Hopewell Super Buy Rite in Pennington, N.J. ($15.49; buyrite.wine), Moorestown Super Buy Rite in Moorestown, N.J. ($15.99; moorestownbuyrite.com)
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