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What’s your favorite season? Ours, hands-down, is grilling season. Whether it’s a sunny day, a chill night, game day, or just Tuesday, there’s nothing like getting a char on and pairing it up with Pendleton® Whisky.
If you’ve ever wondered what whisky goes best with your favorite grilled foods, this post is for you! From smoky meats on a charcoal grill to seared salmon and grilled peaches, we’ve assembled the ultimate grilled food and whisky pairings, fresh and ready to help you level up your grilling chops. And by chops, we mean skills—but also chops.
Are you hungry yet? Let’s fire it up!
One of the best things about grilling is that it’s as simple as you want. Whether you’re the traditional salt-and-pepper type, love a good smoke show, or stand by your marinade, you can’t go wrong.
Sure, you can add whisky as an ingredient to your marinade or rib sauce, but nothing enhances the grilling experience more than a perfectly paired glass of whisky.
Pairing your grilled foods with whisky takes your hosting (and serving) skills to the next level, balancing out the char with a smooth finish that both new whisky drinkers and connoisseurs alike can appreciate.
The savory sweetness of an aged steak, charred to perfection on the outside with a melt-in-your-mouth texture, needs a whisky that’s smooth and complex with toasty caramel notes to elevate the flavors of the beef.
Pendleton® 1910 Bourbon is the best whiskey for grilled steak. Its robust flavors provide the pairing with backbone, complementing the caramelized crust on the meat and rounding out each bite with its rich mouthfeel.
Whether you like your ribs with a dry rub or saucy and sticky, there is no better whisky pairing than Pendleton® Whisky Midnight. Midnight is bursting with warm flavors of caramelized banana, ginger, and cloves, finishing with a nutty pecan kick. Translation: your fall-off-the-bone ribs just earned legendary cookout status.
There’s nothing like a charcoal-smoked bird. It’s a massive flavor bomb that’s unfussy and always impressive. To pair whisky with smoked meats, you’ll need to choose a spirit with a spicy side to it, something that will rise above the smoke flavors and add a punch of sweet, fruity tones to complete the picture.
Pendleton® 1910 Rye fits the bill nicely, rounding out the experience with complex notes of dried pineapple, exotic spices, and nuts that are nothing short of a flavor explosion in your mouth.
To best enjoy the bounty of summertime, throw some fresh veggies on the grill. There’s no better way to enjoy fresh-picked asparagus, peppers, squash, sweet potatoes, and corn, and they’ll really get you singing when you pair them with a whisky cocktail.
While we love Pendleton® Whisky Original with grilled veggies, mixing up a cocktail like the Rodeo Rita (a whisky-fied riff on a classic margarita) adds a zingy tartness and ensures your drink doesn’t overpower the fresh-picked flavors of the harvest.
If you’ve never paired whisky with grilled fruit, you’re in for a treat! Grilling adds a caramelized layer to pineapple, peaches, apricots, and plums that dance with the spicy, peppery complexity of Pendleton® 1910 Rye. You’ve got sweet, juicy notes with caramelly overtones echoed by tropical fruit and spice—it’s a match made in the American West!
Extra points if you use some of those sweet grilled goods in a cocktail at your next shindig. At the grill, put four charred peaches aside to mix our Pendleton® Whisky Smoked Peach Cocktail. It’s a perfect American BBQ in a glass – smoky, sweet, and refreshing as hell.
Ah… Pendleton® Whisky, a hot grill, and nature’s backyard. What more could you want? Now that you have the whisky pairing blueprint, all you need to do is order a bottle and get grillin’.
