Do You Take Your Pancakes With Beer or Wine?

So, I’ve been known to come up with some wacky food and wine pairings based on random flavor profiles. Several factors went into this particular one.

The first was BK’s inclination to make pancakes with beer instead of milk and his leaving behind a few bottles of Pete’s Wicked Strawberry Blonde. The second was the carton of strawberries I received for free when buying a basket of groceries the other day. And the last was my decision to open the 2005 Martella Grenache Rose’ that I drank less than a glass of Sunday night.
How do these all fit together?
Well, I thought I might be holding on to my last bottle of Michael Martella’s tasty pink stuff perhaps a little too long and wanted to go ahead and open it. While still quite crisp and full of strawberry, raspberry, and citrus, it might have been a tad less lovely than my previous tasting, probably about a year ago. The grapes come from Michael’s brother’s vineyard in Fiddletown, where one of my favorite bottlings of Barbera also comes from. If I recall correctly, the rose’ is actually saignee from the Grenache he also produces.

With that open bottle, the wheels started turning yesterday. I was too tired after a day of traipsing through wine country to make it last night, but I knew exactly what was for dinner this evening.  I love rose’ and pork products (ham, sausage, BLT’s, etc) and so knew I needed a bit of bacon as well.A little stop and some dishwashing later, I had myself a quick and delightful meal.    The main dish: so easy, so simple, and yet marvelously fun.  Bisquick mixed with egg and the Strawberry Blonde, then sliced strawberries pushed into the batter as it cooked. Granted, they weren’t made from scratch with ricotta like my blueberry pancakse were, but the whole meal was ready in about 10 minutes.  And boy, were they good.  Though I really enjoyed the wine with the pancakes, it worked better with the bacon, and the remainder of the beer went slightly better with the stack (after all, it was one of the ingredients), it was fun to come up with something new.  The fact that it was tasty and fast was just maple syrup on the side….