Avondale Sky Tidal Bay

I won’t lie that when I hauled the bottle and it was from Avondale Sky, it got me excited. The bottle is just so darn pretty. When I got my 12 Tides wine box from Bishop’s Cellar, I was immediately drawn to it. The label to me represents the ocean which is a huge part of NS.

On the back of the bottle, the suggested paring was anything seafood, mushroom risotto or crispy chicken. I knew right then that the chicken was not what we were going to try. I was deciding between mushroom risotto and seafood. It took me a week to choose. Then I got an email from The Market Warehouse about their Canada Day Special with one of the options being a Seafood Tower. I was going back and forth but in the back of mind I kept thinking about the seafood tower. My husband said mushroom risotto is always good. I was still going back and forth on the idea in my mind. One evening I sent him a text saying you pick. Here’s the three options for our first tidal bay tasting.

1. mushroom risotto (kids can have poutine)
2. Seafood Tower + Salad (kids can have poutine)
3. Lobster roll + Potato salad (I’ll cook steak for kids and Olivia can have a vegetables with potato salad)

He replied within minutes option 2, it’s what you really want. I was so happy because it’s truly what I wanted but knew the risotto would be soo good with the mushroom blend we’ve been using. That evening I ordered the seafood tower for $50 and two baskets of strawberries for strawberry shortcake. Here is what came with the Seafood Tower.

Coming back to the wine, the Avondale Sky Tidal Bay is blend from L’Acadie Blanc, Vidal and Geisenheim with notes of apple, peach and lilac flowers with an underlying mineral tone. It is also a very dry wine. My first sip of it, I thought wow this is a good and refreshing taste. It was smooth and I loved it so much I went to their website that evening to check out their other wines and went on google maps to see how far away the winery was from Halifax.

Here is a link to their website. You can also follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Their winery has a restaurant too which I would love to try. My husband and I both enjoyed the wine and recommend it.

Seafood Tower

July 1st rolled in and I was excited to prepare the seafood tower. For the shrimps, I poached them because I wanted to eat it as a shrimp cocktail. It’s super easy to do. Bring a pot of water to boil with some aromatics. I added fresh parsley, the juice of half of a lemon juice the lemon, 8 peppercorns and some salt. Bring to a rapid boil, then turn off the burner and add the shrimp for five minutes covered. Prepare a cold bath when for when they are cooked. Set aside. Serve with some cocktail sauce.

For the scallops, we had them two ways. One of the ways was a scallop crudo. It was sliced thinly in a spicy citrus broth and the other way was with butter and garlic grilled on the half shell on the bbq. Here’s the recipe for scallop crudo. For the bbq scallop, I just left the scallop in the shell and added some butter and a clove of minced garlic. I left it on the bbq for about 10 minutes.

I served the oysters on half shell with a honey mignoette from the book Out of NEW Nova Scotia Kitchens by Craig Flinn.

We ate the crab as is, since it was already pre-cooked.

For the salad, I used a mix of spinach, romaine, Bramble Hill Farm sprout salad mix, cucumber, radish, tomatoes, red onion, fresh mozzarella balls and fresh basil with a maple dijon vinaigrette.

The whole spread was delicious. My husband really enjoyed it and so did I!.

We ended the meal with a strawberry shortcake. Everyone enjoyed it. Homemade tea biscuits, homemade vanilla gelato and fresh strawberries.

Please like and share this post! Comment below if you have tried this wine or visited the Avondale Sky winery. As always drink responsibly and please don’t drink and drive. Stay tuned for our next Tidal Bay reveal!

Love, Backend Kitchen xx