What’s better than sipping a nice wine while enjoying a summer backyard barbecue?
Adding some of that wine to the actual barbecue sauce, that’s what.
And that’s exactly what Woodbridge Wines by Robert Mondavi has done.
It’s added a good glug of its Cabernet Sauvignon to create a limited-edition Daddy Sam’s & Woodbridge Wine ‘Cue Sauce. Texas-based Daddy Sam’s has been making barbecue sauces for generations.
You know it’s a good sign when the Cabernet Sauvignon is the first item listed under the ingredients list. The pourable sauce is at once smoky, tangy, sweet, savory and just a little bit spicy, thanks to molasses, tomato puree, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, garlic, cayenne, and jalapeno.
You don’t necessarily taste the wine at the forefront, but its black plum and berry notes definitely combine with the tomato to create a nice underlying fruitiness. It was the perfect finishing touch for pork ribs right after they came off the grill. But it also would work well with chicken, beef, shrimp or even tofu.
Two tablespoons of sauce has 60 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, 12g total carbohydrates and 230 mg sodium.
The 19-ounce jars of sauce are available on Amazon.com only through Sept. 30.
FOOD GAL CONTEST: Five — yes, count ’em, five — lucky Food Gal readers each will win one jar of the Daddy Sam’s & Woodbridge Wine ‘Cue Sauce. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST Aug. 22. Winners will be announced Aug. 24.
How to win?
Tell me what you’d most like to keep sealed in a jar. It can be food-related or not, tangible or intangible. Best five answers win the sauce.
Here’s my own answer: “The taste of my Mom’s cooking. I’d love to be able to somehow bottle the flavors, aromas and spirit of the dishes she used to cook for my Dad, brothers and I, especially now that she’s passed away. I can recreate a few of her dishes, but not nearly the entire breadth of her repertoire. In my mind’s eye, I can still easily picture her tossing vegetables in a fiery wok with ginger and soy sauce, or hunched over the counter, rolling delicate rice noodles or folding pork-filled dumplings. But I’d love to be able to open a jar, take a whiff and a taste now and then, and fully experience all those flavors magically all over again.”
WINNER OF LAST WEEK’S CONTEST: In last week’s contest, I asked you to tell me how you most like to enjoy your steak. The winner will receive two free Porterhouse steaks (a value of $43 each) from Snake River Farms.
Congrats to:
Caroline K., who wrote, “There’s this steakhouse in the middle of Iowa – Montour, Iowa called Rube’s. When I was in college in the middle of Iowa, once a year or so, a group of us would scrounge up money, load up in someone’s tiny car and drive on these country roads to get to Rube’s to eat steak. The rumor was they killed the cows right there on the premises. You get to a glass fridge with all these different cuts of steak. You pick it, then walk into these rooms with HUGE grills that people stand around. Almost like the Midwest version of Korean bbq. There’s squirt bottles of water and various sauces. I had no idea what I was doing but watched as people kept squirting water on their steaks. I picked ribeye because that’s what everyone else was getting, laid my steak down on the grill and kept squirting it once in a while and flipping often. Again, I had no clue what I was doing! But standing there with a bunch of 19-year-olds while we pretended to know how to grill and then eating these massive steaks at a huge shared table is one of my favorite memories of college and of Iowa. That is my favorite way to eat steak! I went back years later when my brother graduated from the same college and while it was still fun and pretty much the same, the absence of my own friends reminded me that at the heart of the most memorable meals for me is the company I’m with.”