Bourbon Glazed Pork Chops and Petite Sirah

Last night I grilled some bourbon glazed pork chops while Mr. Lush worked late. The glaze, which is based on the old TGIFridays Jack Daniels sauce, has soy sauce, pineapple juice, teriyaki sauce, brown sugar, a little bit of cayenne pepper, onion and garlic and some bourbon. (ok, a lot of bourbon – I quadruple the recipe amount but it reduces for 45 minutes so all the alcohol is cooked out)

Anyway, the glaze is fantastic – helps the pork chops stay moist (even the really thick ones, especially if you give them a quick high heat sear and move them to indirect heat), but I admit, I was a little lost on what to pair with it. I've only made it once since I really got into wine and I didn’t really want to go white; the glaze is pretty dark and strong. But, its also pork, and it has pineapple juice (and was served with grilled pineapple) so I didn’t want to go too heavy a red. I did a search on foodandwine.com for recipes containing pork and soy sauce and looked at their recs to pair. Wow, a big range – from a Pouilly Fuisse to Pinot Noir to a “tannic-rich” Bordeaux. In the end, I decided on the Peltier Station Petite Sirah. (I was going to pick a Syrah, but the only one we had was a $55 bottle and it just wasn’t a $55 Tuesday.) It went fairly well with it, not a perfect pair but a bit fruity to complement the pineapple and a bit rich to stand up to the soy/teriyaki sauce and bourbon based glaze. I would probably pick a nice full Pinot Noir next time or a fuller Syrah, because it was just a smidge “big” for it. Not much, but just enough to keep it from being a perfect pair.

Oh, and update on the Blind Ambition Tour…. I got a couple right in a row – a Cab and a Pinot and in fact, I even guessed the Pinot was from Monterey, but that it was probably a cheaper one because the mouth didn’t quite live up to the nose as well as the recent ones we had in the $35+ range. (and in fact, it was a $20 one – good, just not as good as the others) So, we’ll see, I think I’ve still gotten more wrong this month than I’ve gotten right, but at least I’m improving.