A Chillable Red for a Summer Feast

For this month’s Wine Pairing Weekend event, Wendy from A Day in the Life on the Farm invited us to share “Seasonal Summer Fare with Wines to Pair”. I decided to serve a chillable red for a summer feast in response to this theme. Thanks Wendy for hosting!

The summer spread I’m sharing today was inspired by fresh local produce from the farmer’s market and our Family Dinner local food share.

I love building a meal around seasonal produce, and that has been the theme of many of our podcast conversations.

Jump to:

• Swiss chard salad
• The Rest of the Spread
• Wine Pairing
• More seasonal summer fare pairing articles

Swiss chard salad

Today’s Wine Pairing Weekend article was a good nudge to share the recipe for Swiss Chard Salad that I’ve been meaning to post for a while.

I first started making it when a podcast guest mentioned the idea of using raw chard to make a salad. Prior to that, I’d always focused on cooking chard, in recipes such as these Swiss Chard Potatoes or our simple Sautéed Swiss Chard.

The chard salad is very versatile, as you can add whatever veggies you might have on hand. In this case, I sliced up some local cucumbers and radishes, along with some grape tomatoes. The veggies get tossed with a creamy vegan Caesar dressing. A good quality store bought brand makes the prep super easy.

The Rest of the Spread

There were also scallions in the food share. So I made a quick raw scallion salsa to serve with our grilled pork tenderloin. I’ll have to share the salsa recipe soon, but it’s basically a combo of scallions, evoo, chili powder and lime juice.

Rounding out the plate, I had made some fresh kale pesto recently, so used that to make some Orzo Salad with Kale Pesto. That’s always a go to summer meal for us! Basically, when I get local kale and it’s too warm for kale soup, I’m inclined to make kale pesto.

It’s not quite fresh local corn season here yet, but the corn on the cob at Whole Foods looked pretty good, so I grabbed some of that to add to the summery spread.

Wine Pairing

While white wines or rosé might be the natural instinct when the temperatures rise, I also like to consider opening a chillable red wine. Typically these are lighter, fruit forward red wines with a relatively low alcohol content. Beaujolais, Zweigelt and Frappato are some examples of red wines I like to serve with a chill. This article has more information about Frappato and other Sicilian grapes.

We went with the Love You Bunches Sangiovese ($30, 12.5% ABV) from Stolpman vineyards for this event. This wine from Santa Barbara County is produced using carbonic maceration, a winemaking technique where fermentation starts inside the grapes. This is achieved by placing whole clusters an a sealed tank filled with carbon dioxide.

The carbonic maceration process gives Love You Bunches a lighter, juicy version of Sangiovese. The wine has a nice floral nose, with red berry fruit and brambles on the palate.

As anticipated, the Love You Bunches worked very well with the meal.

The Sangiovese has enough substance to go with the grilled pork, and the food friendly acidity helps, too. The fruit forward aspect helped it pair with the summer veggies. I would definitely give a thumbs up to this chillable red pairing with a summer spread!  

More seasonal summer fare pairing articles

Looking for more great summer fare with wine pairings? Check out this collection from my Wine Pairing Weekend colleagues!

• Gwendolyn of Wine Predator is opening “2 Arizona Wines for Summer Times: Page Springs Cellars Rose and Caduceus Anubis Red Blend with Fresh Apricot Salad and Burgers”
• Jeff of Food Wine Click! is sharing “A Summer Salad with Muscadet” 
• David of Cooking Chat has  “A Chillable Red for a Summer Spread” 
• Camilla of Culinary Cam cooked up “Albacore Tuna Burgers + Midpoint’s 2024 February’s Bouquet Rosé” 
• Jennifer of Vino Travels has “Bubbles and Bites: Prosecco and Frittata to Please your Palate“
• Linda of My Full Wine glass was “Inspired by Lillian: Rice Noodle Salad and Sicilian Grillo”
• Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm writes about “The Wine I Paired with Classic Summer Fare“