Last week a good friend of mine, Tim Harper, while we were chatting about various wines, mentioned that he had a great bottle of Sangiovese Wine from Flora Springs winery. He told me about his passion about Northern Italian grape varietals. I too enjoy a good Chianti so when he mentioned he had a Sangiovese bottle I twisted his arm to share it with me as a Northern California Chianti replacement.

Tim reluctantly let go of one of his bottles. Since this was Friday morning, I begun to picture my dinner that night with my family. First  had to figure out what I was going to cook to match the wine. Now Tim described the wine as soft, smooth, and a bit fruity. For that I knew it could not be any heavy steak based dinner.

After running through various scenarios in my  mind's, note each scenario always ended up with the bottle of wine empty, I decide we were going to have some chicken-based dinner.

I ended up with a chicken cacciatore. As this is a simple recipe with onion, green pepper, stewed tomatoes, wine, and oregano. I decided to serve it with Penne Pastas, as they seemed to be the favorite around the house and we always have enough boxes to last us through the rest of the year.

The chicken dish and the 2004 Flora Springs Sangiovese wine complemented each other wonderfully. As Tim mentioned the wine was simple, mellow but yet fruity. The nose was soft with a hint of oak.

So it was a simple, elegant dinner based around Tim's big heart of sharing his 2004 Sangiovese Flora Springs wine. If you see Tim let him know that I would be happy to partake in a few more of his wine bottles. Cheers!

Tim and his good friend Pat.

Flora Springs Winery & Vineyards
1978 W. Zinfandel Lane
St. Helena, CA 94574
(707) 963-5711 – main office
(707) 963-7518 – fax main office

http://www.florasprings.com/