Spinach Artichoke Pickle Dip & Bordeaux Blanc
A pickly spinach artichoke dip, a wine style you will fall in love with, and a tangent about Lazy Susans.
Hello my wine and dip loving fam! It’s FRIDAY! And you know what that means - another Wine & Dip to kick off your weekend! If you’ve been here for a bit, you may have noticed that I’m diving straight into the wine and dip stuff rather than rambling on about Christmas and how cute my baby is. The plan is to leave the recipes as recipes, and I’ll be sending out one montly email with a recipe round up, life updates, things to look forward to, links to my favourite things, and so on. So stay tuned for that! And as always, thank you so much for being here!
This post contains affiliate links. If you choose to click or make a purchase through these links, I may earn a commission. Thank you!
I’m super proud of this week’s dip.
I originally planned to make a classic Spinach Artichoke dip, but as I was grabbing the spinach from the fridge, I saw my big ol’ jar of baby dills. I immediately started snacking on them, as I normally do, and then the genius thought came to me: I SHOULD PUT PICKLES IN THE DIP. Because everything’s better with pickles. And so, the Spinach Artichoke Pickle Dip was born.
What to pair?
If you’ve seen some of my other pickle pairings, you might have caught on that I love pairing pickles with a crisp, herbaceous white wine. This means white wine styles with high acidity (because acidity + acidity just works, and pickles are acidic), and that have herbal/vegetal flavours (since pickles are vegetables). My go-to is Sauvignon Blanc because of it’s common flavours of asparagus, bell pepper, or fresh cut grass, and I knew I wanted to stick with this one since this dip has alll the vegetables in it. AKA so many veggies that you can definitely eat this for dinner and not be worried about missing out on your daily fibre intake. And I’m a dietitian, so what I say is straight facts.
Rather than going for one of the more common ones from New Zealand or the Loire Valley in France, I decided to go with a French Bordeaux Blanc. A wine style that’s not nearly as well known, but deserves all the attention. Bordeaux Blanc is a white wine style from the Bordeaux wine region in France that is usually a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon (and Muscadelle, but were not talking about that one here). The Sauvignon Blanc contributes that beautiful high acidity, intense aromatics, and herbaceousness, while the Semillon (a grape that produces naturally full-bodied, oily whites) contributes by toning down the acidity and adding in some lush creaminess.
This wine style is the perfect choice for this dip, and here’s why:
Matching flavours: That matching herbaceousness that we just talked about.
Contrasting textures (with a hint of similarity): The wine’s acidity contrasts the creamy, cheesy dip, which refreshes the palate between bites, AND that bit of creaminess in the wine matches the creamy texture (so the rich dip doesn’t end up overpowering the wine).
I paired this dip with the amazing Mary Taylor Jean Marc Barthez Bordeaux Blanc from the Entre-Deux-Mers subregion in Bordeaux. I’ve absolutely loved every single wine I’ve tried from the Mary Taylor line, and this one is no exception! It’s made up of 95% Sauvignon Blanc and 5% Semillon with fresh flavours of lime, green apple, gooseberry, and subtle hint of flowers, bees wax, and of fresh cut grass. The quality here is INSANE for the price and I highly highly recommend you give it a try!
That wreath though…
If you saw my video on Instagram (see below), you probably saw that I served this in the middle of a wreath of homemade garlic butter buns. If you’re making this for a holiday event of some sort, I highly recommend you do this!
Here’s how to turn your dip into a holiday wreath:
Step 1: Make the buns. If you make them from scratch this can be a bit tedious, but you can also use any premade dough to cut back on the prep time! My bread baking skills are limited so I followed this Soft Dinner Rolls Recipe by Sally’s Baking Addiction, but I portioned them out into 30 small rolls and brushed them with melted garlic butter when them came out of the oven.
Step 2: Make sure your dip is in a circular dish, and then place it in the middle of a round serving board or Lazy Susan. For the circular dish, I used an 8inch circular cast iron skillet, which I absolutely LOVE for dips! But you can also use a Brie baker like this one, this one, or this one! I went the Lazy Susan route and it worked out perfectly! Side note - why is it called a Lazy Susan? If anyone reading this happens to know, please let me know. Also, if your name is Susan, do you hate that they call it a Lazy Susan? I personally feel like I would love it if they were called it a ‘Lazy Steph’, because it’s a genius item and I am 100% lazy, but I might be the minority. The chances of someone reading this named Susan are slim, but if I’m speaking to you right now, I NEED TO KNOW. OK sorry back to it.
Step 3: Arrange your buns around the dish. I had enough buns for two layers around the dip and it looked great!
If you like the idea but refuse to put this amount of effort in, you can just arrange regular sliced baguette, crackers, or chips around your dip for the same effect! Here’s a picture of how mine turned out. I will admit, I forgot to take actual pictures (it took a long time to film this one and I was hungry and exhausted), but this screen shot from my video gives you a bit of a visual!
Spinach Artichoke Pickle Dip
(With a Garlic Butter Roll Wreath)
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Wine & Dip to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.