Red Wine and Balsamic Peach Compote

It may sound like a strange combination, but hear me out. This red wine and balsamic peach compote is the perfect balance of sweet, savory, and acidic, and it is delicious on everything from pancakes and waffles to cookies and ice cream. 

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One of the things I look forward to most in the summertime is fresh peaches. My boyfriend Gabe and I were in Mystic, Connecticut on a mini vacation last week, and I made him take us out of our way to a farm stand so that we could pick up some fresh Connecticut peaches. Of course my eyes are always bigger than my stomach, so I ended up with a few more peaches than I could comfortably eat before they started getting overripe. I knew that I had to make some kind of recipe with them before they totally went bad, which (along with some inspiration from my grandfather) is how this recipe was born. And while there’s nothing quite as good as a biting straight into a perfectly ripe peach, this red wine and balsamic peach compote is most certainly a very close second.

I know that wine or vinegar and peaches might sound like a somewhat strange combination, but they really do work together remarkably well in this compote. I happen to think that balsamic vinegar, sticky and sweet, already works super well in dessert (think, a really thick balsamic vinegar on vanilla ice cream). When you cook the peaches down with a little bit of brown sugar, they start to release these smoky, almost caramelized notes, and the balsamic vinegar only adds to pleasant bitterness. And deglazing the pan with a bit of red wine adds the perfect amount of acidity and savory, balancing out the sweetness of the peaches and balsamic. This makes for a compote that is not only sweet, but perfectly balanced in sweet-savory-acidic flavor.

INSPIRATION FROM MY GRANDFATHER

While an abundance of fresh peaches certainly partially inspired this recipe, I also have to give some credit to my grandfather for a recipe that he used to make all the time when I was a kid: red wine soaked peaches (pesche al vino rosso). I remember him almost always having a jar of peaches soaking in wine in the summertime. After Friday night dinners of pizza and Sunday suppers of pasta with gravy, he would pour out glasses of it for everyone at the table to help cool us off from the summertime heat. And that included the kids. Of course our glasses were just filled with peaches, not wine, but considering the fact that their once off-white flesh had turned deep burgundy, they still gave us the tiniest buzz. After all, kids in Italy start drinking small amounts of wine at a very young age.

So when I found myself with an abundance of peaches, one of my first instincts was to soak them in wine. But I decided that I wanted to make something that would pay homage to wine-soaked peaches, while putting a different spin on the recipe. My dad used to make a peach compote to top pancakes for breakfast on the weekends, and this was one of my all-time favorite meals. So I decided to combine my grandfather’s wine-soaked peaches and my dad’s peach compote. By deglazing the simmering peaches with a bit of red wine, and adding sweet and grape-y balsamic vinegar at the end, I have to say that this peach compote really does embody the spirit of pesche al vino rosso, while being the perfect sweet topping for any breakfast or dessert.