pork & rice dish

[nimhiril]

One of our favorite dinners is a "one-pot" type dish with pork, black beans & rice, prunes & red bell pepper, garlic, onion, thyme, parsley etc. I'm thinking of making it for friends tomorrow night and would like some ideas for wine to serve with and use in the dish (it calls for "dry red wine" and in the past I've used some very cheap and I'm sure rather bad cooking wine variety...so it can only get better from here.) =) Having recently returned to teh Pacific Northwest, I hear we have a lot of great choices here but don't quite know where to start (except with something not very expensive). Thanks in advance for your help!

[hotwine]

Welcome to the board, Nim. Would try a Pinot Noir with that dish. Look down the board to the Pinot Noir/Red Burgundy thread and you'll see lots mentioned there. One we've enjoyed recently is the Oreana, about $20/bottle.

[dananne]

I'd probably go with a Pinot Noir, also. One more thing to add: Don't cook with a "cooking wine." In fact, don't cook with any wine that you wouldn't actually drink. For this dish, you could even cook with the same wine that you're serving, or if you don't want to "waste" a $20 wine in the recipe, find another of the same variety that is cheaper (Castle Rock is one cheaper, widely available Pinot that comes to mind). Choosing an oaky wine to cook with would impart those woody flavors to the dish, which you'd probably want to avoid. Just my .02.

[Innkeeper]

Cook with Vendange Pinot Noir. It is half the price of the Castle Rock, and perfectly good for cooking.