Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms and a Burgundy #winePW

Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms is a delicious meal that is a great choice if you’re in the mood for easy elegance! We enjoyed it paired with a Burgundy for Open That Bottle Night (OTBN), but you could serve it with other Pinot Noir of your choosing. Read on for the details of our OTBN observance, or click here to jump down to the recipe.

Open That Bottle Night (OTBN) is a special annual occasion for wine lovers, held the fourth Saturday in February. It’s a night when we are urged to open a special bottle of wine that has been languishing too long in the cellar, waiting for a special occasion to be opened. OTBN becomes that occasion for many a good bottle of wine.

Today the Wine Pairing Weekend blogging group is sharing our OTBN experiences. We are a group that always pays a good deal of attention to our food and wine pairings, but when opening a special bottle for OTBN, that focus on pairings is magnified. What food to make with that special bottle?

I planned to open a bottle of red Burgundy that I tried at a wine club dinner two years ago. We tasted quite a few good wines that night, and my OTBN bottle was my favorite from the lineup. This bottle was very good when I tasted it originally, but it seemed like it would get even better with some time in the cellar. But two years seemed like long enough, and OTBN was a good excuse to open it.

Before we get further into discussing the wine, let’s talk about our food pairing for the Burgundy. I thought about making Beef Bourguignon, but realized I wasn’t going to have quite enough time for that on OTBN. Salmon with a mushroom sauce would be a nice pairing for a Burgundy, but I’ve already served up that combo enough here on Cooking Chat. How about pork tenderloin with mushrooms?

This pork tenderloin idea had promise. Pork and Pinot Noir can work well together, and mushrooms improve the match. So I put together a simple Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms recipe for our OTBN meal, and was very pleased with the results.

The rub I made with thyme and garlic powder sealed in the juices nicely, and the meat was tender like you’d expect given the name of the dish. The mushroom cream sauce adds some elegance to the dish, and it all came together nicely on the plate. I’ll definitely be making this again soon! We rounded out the meal with some mashed potatoes and sautéed spinach. OK, time to get back to that wine.

Wine Pairing 

So the red Burgundy that was waiting in the wings for this occasion was the 2012 Moillard Gevrey-Chambertin Beau-Versant (13% ABV). The bottle is in the $60 range.  Gevrey-Chambertin is a village in the Côte de Nuits wine making region of Burgundy.

This Burgundy is 100% Pinot Noir, and is brick red in the glass. I got lilacs on the nose, and licorice was the first thing I tasted. Bright acidity, cherry fruit with vanilla notes. Smooth mouthfeel and a lingering finish.

The cherry fruit went nicely with our pork, and the smoothness of the wine was good with the mushroom sauce. I’d say pork tenderloin was definitely a good pairing for this Burgundy.

As much as I liked this pairing, I have to say my assessment of this bottle may have suffered from the buildup. It is certainly a very fine bottle, but intentionally putting something down for a couple years and open it for OTBN definitely raises expectations that the wine will be something amazing. It was very good, and paired well with our food, but I’ve enjoyed other bottles just as much with recent meals. My conclusion: this was a good pairing, but I think I’ll come back and make this pork tenderloin again and pair it with a simple Pinot I pick up at the shop that day. And the next nice bottle of Burgundy I buy might not last two years in the cellar!

Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms Recipe

I used two tenderloins for this recipe, which is a good amount for 6 or 7 people, or if you want leftovers. You can easily make 1 tenderloin and half the rest of the recipe for a smaller group.

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Be sure to check out all the tasty Open That Bottle Night Wine Pairings from #winePW!

Culinary Adventure with Camilla posted “Dracaena’s Cabernet Franc with Steak au Poivre et Thé“

Curious Cuisiniere is pairing “Teriyaki Salmon and Pinot Noir”

Dracaena Wines shared “When Will Some Day Be? Open That Bottle Now”

Tasting Pour is posting “Steak Diane and Bell Cab Sauvignon”

Rockin Red Blog is sharing “Open That Bottle Night with a Beautiful Italian”

Pull That Cork blogged about “Wine, Friends and Food: Our OTBN and #winePW Evening”

L’Occasion is sharing “Wines of Les Baux-de-Provence to Enjoy with Steak Frites”

foodwineclick posted “Are You Kidding Me? Rosé for OTBN?”

The Armchair Sommelier  shared “OTBN:  A Pipe, a Port, and a Pudding”

ENOFYLZ Wine Blog brings us An Italian-Themed #OTBN

Cooking Chat posted “Pork Tenderloin with Mushrooms and a Burgundy” You are here!

Join us for a live Twitter chat about Open That Bottle Night wine pairings, on Saturday, March 12, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. Just tune into the hashtag #winePW. You can also plan to join us next month’s event. In April we will be talking about Spring Meal Pairings for Southern Rhone Wines, hosted by Jill at L’Occasion. You can get the full list of past and upcoming #winePW event here.