Barranca and BBQ -

Barranca and BBQ: a match made in heaven. My friends at Kuhlman Cellars have long told me that this is a divine pairing but I hadn’t tried it for myself until tonight when I tucked into some local east Texas BBQ. I can now report that this pairing is a spiritual experience. I was blown away by how well the two went together!

The wine on its own is great. It might just be my favorite Kuhlman red. It smells like freshly picked summer blackberries to me and washes the palate with a pleasant red plum flavor. They recommend pairing it with pretty much anything off the grill all summer long, but I also could see it being divine with honey and brie or sweet summer tomatoes.

Tonight at the lake house my parents and I picked up sausage, ribs, brisket, and potato salad from Jerry’s BBQ out in east Texas. Jerry has a stationary food truck on the weekends in Mount Pleasant and wow, can he ever make ribs! They fall off the bone. You can’t even really pick them up! The brisket is so juicy and absolute perfection smothered in their sweet BBQ sauce, which is somehow made even better by Kuhlman’s 2017 Barranca. Bold tannins and summer berry flavors wash over the BBQ, enhancing the sweetness of the BBQ sauce.

I absolutely love what happens to this wine when it’s paired with a sweet sauce. It’s a great example of what wine can do for food and vice versa. If you’re looking for a perfect wine for BBQ, take it from a native Texan: you need this Texas Barranca!

Just for fun, here’s a few photos from today at the lake. I had such a lovely day hanging out in the hammock with my dog Henry. I’m reading Song of Achilles, a wonderful novel set in Ancient Greece that my friend Matthew gave me for my birthday. A sailboat kept sailing past our property, which is such a pretty sight! If someone ever tells you that Texas isn’t beautiful, you send them straight to me.