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How To Make a Wine Reduction Sauce

Last Modified: 11/26/09
First Published: 11/26/09
Views: 4028
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Views: 4028
wine reduction

Wine Reduction Sauce

One of the easiest sauces to make is a wine reduction sauce. We paired this wine sauce with ribeye steak.

Wine Choice

We like to use a full-bodied wine like bordeaux, burgundy - anything like a pinot noir or merlot would work great.

The goal of a sauce like this is to take a good wine and make it thicker by reducing the amount of water, thereby leaving an intense flavor. We used a small sauce pan with about 2 cups of wine over medium-low heat for about 20 - 30 minutes. You want to use a pan that will let the wine easily evaporate, so a pan with shallow sides helps.

As long as the heat is not too high you can just leave it be. Be sure not to let the wine boil though, you just want it to slowly reduce over 20 minutes or so.

We let the wine reduce by about 2/3, that means that you should see only 1/3 of the original amount of wine. At this point you should notice you have a much thicker wine.

Turn off the heat and add 1-2 tablespoons of cold butter and whisk into the wine. Serve over steak, vegetable or even steak sandwiches.