Pairing: Grilled sausages with cabernet sauvignon

Our Wine of the Week, Sebastiani 2012 Alexander Valley Cabernet Sauvignon ($40), is a knockout, with beautiful fruit and enchanting notes of sweet spice and dried herbs. Berry and cherry aromas beckon you to the glass and on first sip, your mouth fills with juicy red fruit, with threads of black fruit -- think black plum and blackberries - woven throughout. Bing cherry reverberates on the finish.

This wine has stature; it is a dignified wine, grown up and well-mannered. It has plenty of fruit but it is not a fruit bomb and at the table it won’t elbow everything else aside. It is bold but not a bully.

When pairing this wine, keep its alcohol in mind; it hovers just below 15 percent and will want some fat to moderate its sweet heat. The obvious match is beef, especially a bone-in ribeye steak, grilled rare and topped with a spoonful of olive butter. Vegetarians should grill large portobellos and top them with black olive tapenade and a shower of black pepper.

Certain cheeses - Fontina, for example -- pair beautifully with the wine, suggesting that pasta with cheese sauces will work well. Roasted root vegetables are good matches, too, and when tomatoes come into season a few weeks from now, slow-cooked tomato sauces or oven-roasted tomatoes will welcome this wine alongside.

But we’re in the casual season now, food-wise, and so I’m suggesting sausage, especially local sausage from Gypsy Girl, One World Sausages, Panizzera Sausages, Caggiano Sausages or one of our other fine producers. Don’t go too spicy or the wine will seem bitter; you want juicy and flavorful but not hot. Caggiano’s Sicilian sausages are perfect. You’ll need some sort of metal or ceramic mold for the polenta, as well. The tapenade in this dish is chunky, not puréed, which I think makes a better match with the wine.

Grilled Sausages with Polenta & Tapenade

Serves 3 to 4

- Kosher salt

1 cup coarse-grain yellow polenta or cornmeal

¼ cup chopped, oil-cured black olives

¼ cup chopped Kalamata olives

½ cup chopped California black olives

2 garlic cloves, crushed and minced

2 anchovy fillets, minced

3 tablespoons chopped fresh Italian parsley

1 teaspoon fresh thyme leaves

2 teaspoon grated orange zest

? cup best-quality, extra-virgin olive oil

- Black pepper in a mill

2 tablespoons butter

2 ounces Parmigiano-Reggiano or similar cheese, grated

6 sausages of choice

Pour 4 cups of water into a medium saucepan set over high heat, add a generous tablespoon of salt and bring to a boil over high heat. Using a whisk, stir the water in one direction to create a vortex; slowly pour the polenta into the vortex, stirring all the while. Reduce the heat to medium and continue to stir until the mixture thickens. Switch from a whisk to a wooden spoon and stir frequently until the polenta is very thick and tender; if it seems too thick, add more water, ¼ cup at a time.

While the polenta cooks, put the olives, garlic, anchovies, parsley, thyme and orange zest into a small bowl and toss together. Stir in the olive oil, season with black pepper, cover and set aside.

When the polenta is almost done, add the butter, cheese and about 3 tablespoons of the tapenade and stir well. Rinse a 6-cup mold in cold water, tip the polenta into it, agitate the pan to level the polenta, cover with a sheet of wax paper or aluminum foil and set aside for 30 minutes.

Cook the sausages on a ridged grill pan or an outdoor grill.

Invert the polenta onto a large, flat plate and lift off the mold. Cut the sausages in half, set them around the polenta, spoon tapenade on top of the polenta and serve right away.

Michele Anna Jordan has written 21 books to date, including the new “Good Cook’s” series. Email Jordan at michele@saladdresser.com. You’ll find her blog, “Eat This Now,” at pantry.blogs.pressdemocrat.com.