Saturday Night – Radishes, Grapefruit, and Artichoke Hearts… Oh my! – Part 1

We were at Mick and Amy’s house for dinner this past Saturday and Mick dove into his trove of recipes books and found something new. He found a new scallop recipe that had radishes, grapefruit juice, artichoke hearts and butter. We started though with a Greek salad first and it was paired with a Kim Crawford 2009 Sauvignon Blanc.

"Greek Salad"

The nose was a pleasant mix of grapefruit, lime and some tropical fruit. Tasting the wine there was a crisp flavour of white grapefruit running the length of it. The structure of the Kim Crawford was nice but the acidity seemed lacking causing the wine to seem ‘flabby’ at times. I was a bit disappointed with the bottle as over the years the Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc has been excellent and I tend to use those wines as a personal benchmark on what a good Sauvignon Blanc should be and this one wasn’t at that level.

"Scallops + the kitchen sink :)"

Here is the group rating for the wine – Mick - 88, Mark - 88, Kathy – 87, Amy - 87, Overall – 87.5.

"Not as good as earlier years"

Here is the LCBO information on this wine –

KIM CRAWFORD SAUVIGNON BLANC (V)

VINTAGES 35386
750 mL bottle
Price: $ 18.95
Wine, White Wine
13.5% Alcohol/Vol.
Sugar Content : XD
Made in: New Zealand, New Zealand
By: Constellation Wines Nz
Release Date: May 15, 2010

Description - Vintage after vintage, the world-renowned Kim Crawford displays his winemaking prowess with Sauvignon Blanc. The 2007 and 2008 vintages each received 91 points from Wine Spectator! This lively wine exhibits aromas such as gooseberry, passion fruit, grass, nettle, mineral, and citrus. Tantalizing with steamed mussels or warm chicken salad.

We continued drinking the Kim Crawford with Mick’s new scallop recipe. The Kim Crawford was a decent pairing with both the Greek salad and the scallop recipe. The new scallop recipe was a bit of miss however, too many odd flavour competing hurt this dish. I think the other reason we weren’t too keen on it was, Mick has done so many better scallop recipes that were truly excellent that he has set the bar a tad too high!

Click here for Part 2