snowkiss winery

wine. reimagined.



Cooking with Snowkiss Vins





25 June 2024



Cooking is a pastime that I have long enjoyed, especially once I finally finished grad school and was able to afford ingredients to make meals with greater complexity than chili dogs served with Jello shots. Over the years, I developed a core set of simple but reliable recipes that made cooking and meal prepping for the work week a great way to spend Sunday evening.





When I decided to try my hand at using our fruit wines in recipes, I knew I would have to up my game since the only time I used wine in cooking before was to add a splash to a jar of marinara sauce. As always, I used this as a great excuse to buy a couple of books on the topic, and quickly realized that I would be using elements from a lot of different French dishes. While French cuisine can be extremely complex, I found a lot of recipes were straight forward and easy to follow, which always makes life easier!


In the end, I developed eight dishes using our Vins, one for each fruit. In most cases, the flavors of the wine came through clearly in the finished meal, and even when that wasn’t the case, the food still turned out to be quite tasty!



Apricot Poached Tilapia





Since our Vin Apricot is a very delicate wine, I tried to come up with a recipe where the apricot flavors would not only make it through to the final dish but also would compliment the other ingredients. As a result, the best option that I could think of would be to poach some tilapia in the wine and see what happened. Having never poached fish before, I was lucky to find some great instructional videos online, making creating this recipe far easier than expected. After cooking, the fish turned out perfectly: a flaky and tender. The fruity notes popped and made for a fantastic meal served along with black beans and cilantro lime rice.


3 tilapia filets appx 0.5 lb each

1 cup Vin Apricot

6 tablespoons of heavy cream

2 tablespoons of butter

3 sprigs each of tarragon and parsley

1 large shallot

Salt and pepper to taste


Sprinkle salt and pepper on top of the tilapia and set aside. Finely chop the shallot and add to a poaching pan along with the butter, wine, and half the herbs and bring to a slow boil. Add the fish, cover, and cook for 18 minutes, basting continuously for the last three minutes. Remove the fish and then add cream and bring to a boil. Reduce to about one third of the original volume and add the rest of the herbs. Spoon cream sauce over the fish and serve with black beans and cilantro lime rice.



Blackberry Bourguignon





Beef Bourguignon is a classic French dish that is rich and hearty- a perfect wintertime treat! Traditionally made with a deep red French wine, I thought that our Vin Blackberry would make for an interesting twist on this dish. When I tasted the final dish, I was shocked at how much of the flavor of the wine had been incorporated into not only the vegetables, but the beef as well. And then there was the sauce, which was intoxicatingly berry rich and robust and completely tied the meal together.

2 lbs chuck roast 5 oz bacon
3 carrots, sliced
1 large white onion, sliced
2 tablespoons of minced garlic
1 tablespoon tomato paste
2 tablespoons of flour
2 cups Vin Blackberry
Rosemary, parsley, and thyme sprigs
Salt and pepper

Cut chuck roast into 2-inch cubes and coat all sides with salt and pepper. Refrigerate for four hours. Preheat oven to 250oF. Dice the bacon and cook in a Dutch oven over medium heat until the fat is completely rendered. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon and set aside. Add chuck cubes to the Dutch oven and brown each side for about two minutes set aside along with the bacon. Add carrots, onion, and garlic and cook for about ten minutes. Stir in tomato paste along with flour to thicken follow by stirring in the wine. Add the beef and bacon back into the pot, stir and top with herbs. Cover the Dutch oven and place in the pre-heated oven and allow to cook for 2 hours. Serve over mashed potatoes.


Blueberry Barbacoa





Barbacoa is an amazing and versatile dish where any number of different meats are slow cooked along with a variety of spices for succulent and extremely flavorful dish. Typically cooked with water or beef stock, I opted to use our Vin Blueberry as the liquid base for this dish. While the barbacoa did not quite have the same level of intense fruit flavor as we got in the Blackberry Bourguignon, there was still a clear fruitiness to the dish with a hint of blueberry mingled in with all the delicious spices.

3 lbs chuck roast, cut into large chunks
1 medium yellow onion, finely chopped
7 oz can of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, finely chopped
1 cup vin blueberry
4 limes
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon cumin
1 tablespoon oregano
2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon ground cloves
3 bay leaves

Add chopped onions and chipotle peppers into a slow cooker follow with the wine and stir to combine. Squeeze lime juice into the pot and add cumin, oregano, salt, pepper, and cloves. Sear the beef on high heat in olive oil and then add to the slow cooker, making sure to fully submerge the beef in the liquid. Place bay leaves on top and cook on low for 7 hours. Remove and discard the bay leaves and then shred the beef and allow to cook for one additional hour on low. I served the barbacoa on flour tortillas topped with chopped white onion paired with beans and Spanish rice, which made for a superb, warming meal on a chilly Colorado April night!



Slow Cooked Cranberry Turkey





When I started thinking about cooking with my wines, one of my first ideas was making turkey in a slow cooker with our Vin Cranberry. In my home, we often cook turkey breasts in our slow cooker and have the process down to an art, using just chicken broth if we are going for a Thanksgiving meal or using a variety of sauces for anything ranging from BBQ to Tikki Masala. In this recipe, I used Vin Cranberry in place of some of the chicken broth and ended up with a delicious, cranberry-infused delight! Both the potatoes and the turkey nicely took up the tart flavors of the wine and just a touch of the color as well.


1 2.5 lb turkey breast, thawed

2 lbs potatoes

2 cups chicken broth

2 cups Vin Cranberry

2% milk

Butter

Olive oil

Rosemary and thyme sprigs

Turkey gravy


Wash potatoes and cut into quarters. Add enough potatoes to slow cooker to form a single layer on the bottom. Put about 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan and heat to medium high. Add turkey breast and sear on all sides, typically 1-2 minutes per side. Place turkey on top of potato layer and add the remaining potatoes. Pour in chicken broth and Vin Cranberry and place rosemary and thyme sprigs on top of turkey. Cover and cook for 8 hours on low heat. Remove turkey and set aside to rest. Transfer potatoes to a bowl and mash, adding milk and butter as desired to taste. Serve with gravy along with any other desired side dishes.



Peach Braised Salmon





Using our Dutch oven once again, we created a light and delightful peach-braised salmon. The salmon itself turned out tender and mild without any clear flavors from the wine infused during cooking. However, the golden yellow pan sauce expressed all of the flavors from the recipe: hint of sweet onion, ginger, and peach. Absolutely not to be missed when serving this dish!


4 salmon filets

3 tablespoons of olive oil

1 lemon, sliced

1 medium sweet onion, chopped

2 shallots, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

2 tablespoons of flour

3 tablespoons of ginger paste

Dill weed sprigs

1 ½ cups of Vin Peach

Salt and pepper to taste


Preheat oven to 250oF and heat olive oil in a Dutch Oven over medium heat on the stove top. While the olive oil is heating, salt and pepper both sides of the salmon filets. Once the oil is hot, sear the salmon filets for about one minute on each side, remove salmon and set aside. Add the onion, shallots, and garlic and cook for about 5 minutes. Add ginger paste and flour and mix. Follow by mixing in the Vin Peach. Return the salmon filets to the Dutch over and top with lemon slices and dill weed. Cover the Dutch oven and cook for 1 hour. Serve fish with a generous portion of the pan sauce alongside oven roasted fingerling potatoes.



Plum Harvest Chicken Soup





Who doesn’t enjoy a warm, hearty bowl of soup, especially on a chilly fall night? I tend to think about winter when it comes to our Vin Plum, so I wanted to make a soup that is thick and hearty with ingredients that evoke the feeling of winter days. While the plum added a nice purplish color to the soup initially, extracted colors (especially orange from the sweet potato) muted out the wine color in the final soup, although the chicken appeared to pick up a little bit of the wine color. Similarly, the chicken was the only part of the soup that retained a hint of the fruity flavors of the wine, but the soup made for a rich and hearty meal sure to take the chill off!


3 chicken breasts, chopped

2 sweet potatoes, chopped

1 cup sliced carrots

1 yellow squash, cut in half lengthwise and then sliced

1 17 oz can sweet corn

1.5 cup Vin Plum

6 cups chicken stock

1 cup dry wild rice mixture

Salt and pepper to taste


Sear the cut chicken in olive oil and drain, transfer to a large pot. Add sweet potato, carrots, squash, corn, wine, and chicken stock. Bring the soup to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer for 1.5 hours. Add wild rice and simmer an additional 30 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.



Coq Au Vin Raspberry





Using our Vin Raspberry in place of a red wine truly elevates this classic wine-based French chicken recipe. Tartness from the wine infused the entire dish, and the sauce featured crystal clear raspberry notes layered into the overall savory profile. I paired our Coq Au Vin Raspberry with wild rice, which added a smooth nutty flavor to complete the meal. Make sure to serve with several slices of a nice crusty baguette to mop up the extra sauce!

3 lbs chicken breasts
5 oz bacon
5 carrots, sliced
4 medium shallots, sliced
1 small white onion, sliced
2 tablespoons of minced garlic
2 tablespoon tomato paste
3 tablespoons of flour
½ cup chicken broth
1.5 cups Vin Raspberry
Rosemary and thyme sprigs

Salt and pepper Preheat your oven to 250oF. Dice the bacon and cook over medium heat on the stove top in a Dutch oven, removing the bacon once fully cooked and setting aside on a paper towel and leaving the fat in the pot. Pat the chicken breasts dry and coat both sides with salt and pepper to taste. Quickly sear in the bacon fat for approximately 2 minutes on each side and then set aside with the bacon. Add the carrots, onions, shallots, and garlic and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the chicken broth, tomato paste, and flour and stir while deglazing the pan. Add chicken and bacon into the pan follow with the wine and top with rosemary and thyme. Cover with lid and transfer to the pre-heated oven. Allow the mixture to cook for 2.5 hours. Remove from the oven and serve with wild rice.


Strawberry Fondue





Traditional fondue is an absolutely decadent cheesy treat which can be made even better by swapping out the usual white wine with our Vin Strawberry. On the night we made Strawberry Fondue, we discovered our dish had a complex and fruity flavor that paired wonderfully with a variety of cured meats, plant-based meat balls, veggies, green apple slices and, of course, a nice French bread. The strawberry flavor really popped once we reheated the next day!


½ lb Emmenthal cheese, grated

½ lb Gruyere cheese, grated

½ lb Swiss cheese, grated

1 cup Vin Strawberry

1 garlic clove

2 tablespoons corn starch

Ground pepper and nutmeg to taste


Rub fondue pot with the garlic clove and set clove aside. Add wine and bring to a simmer, stir in cornstarch, nutmeg, and pepper. Add grated cheese in small portions, stirring the pot each time until the cheese fully melts before adding the next portion of cheese. Serve with bread, green apples, or any other preferred accompaniment to traditional fondue.



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Proudly made in Longmont, CO



snowkiss winery
wine. reimagined.