Garlic Wine – Mmmm
January 10th, 2007 | 
Author: “Garlic wine?!?” you ask. Yes! And it’s lovely, believe it or not.
Ok, agreed – it’s not something you are going to pour into a glass and drink. Well, I suppose you could do that if you wanted – and you don’t mind a vegetablish taste.
Over a year ago, I made a gallon of garlic wine using this recipe. Because I wasn’t planning on using this wine for drinking straight, I didn’t worry too much about clarification. The colour of the wine turned out to have straw colour tones – and after letting it age for a year, it did turn out fairly clear although if I had wanted to really clear it up, it could have used some kind of clarifying agent.
Yesterday, I took a rack of lamb out of the freezer and decided to use my garlic wine as part of the liquid mixture that the meat would marinade in as well as have brushed over it during the cooking time. There are no recipes that I could find for marinades that include garlic wine, so I made one up myself – and everyone seemed quite pleased with the results.
Now, a couple of notes are in order:
1. I purchase my lamb from a local farmer who raises lambs. I buy a whole lamb from him, butchered for about $2.50 a pound. That’s a great price for lamb! Some folks find lamb to have a strong taste that they don’t like but the lamb that I’ve been obtaining from my local shepherd is wonderful! It definitely has the taste of lamb that I love but it doesn’t have that overbearing extra taste or smell that I found with frozen New Zealand lamb that I used to buy in the grocery store.
2. You might find the spices I used odd to use together; but they work for my taste buds. And they seemed to work for Wendy as well, who pronounced dinner to be “Wonderful!”
So here’s what I made up:
1 cup of sunflower oil
1 cup garlic wine
teaspoon of rosemary
teaspoon of cumin
approx. 10 dried curry leaves, crushed.
I stirred this up, and let the mixture sit for a while to allow the dried spices to hydrate and add their flavour to the marinade.
In the meantime, I peeled and cut into squares sweet potato (also called yam), and along with white potato, placed them in a large casserole dish. After brushing the marinade over the mixed potato, I roasted this dish for 45 minutes in the oven.
While the potato was roasting, I brushed the rack of lamb with the oil/wine mixture. Rack of lamb does not need long periods of marinading time; it’s not for tenderness but rather to add some flavour.
When the potato was completed, I removed the casserole dish and placed it on the vent burner on the stove, which kept it warm while the lamb was cooking. The lamb was cooked in a shallow roasting pan for 30 minutes, but at ten minute intervals, I removed the lamb and brushed the marinade over the top and sides.
Mmmm.. was it ever good! Along with the potato dish, mixed vegetables of beans and baby carrots were served. And the wine that we drank? A nice Valpolicella.
After dinner, I went and did the Canadian thing – watch the Toronto Maple Leaf hockey team lose yet another game.
If you’re looking for some ideas for wine to add something a little extra to your cooking, consider this garlic wine. It’s very easy to make, the ingredients are cheap, and you don’t have to worry about fining it. Racking a few times after it’s in the secondary is a good idea.
I only made a gallon, but now that I’ve used the garlic wine once, I know I’ll be using it more frequently so I’ll be making another batch of garlic wine, and perhaps will also experiment with other ingredients as well as garlic.
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