pour, simmer & stir

I opened up a rather disappointing bottle of Portuguese red wine the other night, a 2007 Alianca Foral Douro. It's the first I've ever tried this wine, but I should have known we were off to a bad start when I broke one of my corkscrews on trying to pull out the cork. After letting the wine sit for a bit, I pondered over a glass, but you know it's never a good thing when you keep thinking to yourself, "ok, well maybe the next sip will be better." It was flat, tasted like sour cherries in a musty sort of way, and never really gave me anything interesting to want more.

So now I have a mostly full bottle of wine sitting on my counter, but I don't want it to go to waste. Well, it was close to dinner time, so I decided to use it in scraping together a beef stew. Turns out a mediocre wine makes a wonderful stew! RIP corkscrew, but I'll be enjoying the remnants of the stew for a few more days. The (very) ad hoc recipe below, though I guess you could put together whatever you happen to have in the fridge. Forgive me in advance for my poor recipe composing:

1/2 bottle dry red wine
1/2 lb beef shoulder (lamb would also be a good substitute)
1 carrot, chopped (sliced? I'm no recipe writer)
Portobello mushrooms
Salt
Fresh black pepper
Fresh mint
Olive oil
Butter
Sugar
32 oz chicken stock (or beef if that's handy)

Heat olive oil and butter in bottom of pot. Season meat with salt and pepper, then brown meat on all sides in olive oil/butter. Set beef aside. Pour in red wine and boil for about 25 mins, then add in beef, carrot, mint, mushrooms, onions, garlic or other flavors if you'd like (this wasn't very scientific). Let boil and then simmer, covered, for about 2.5 hours. Flavor with salt, pepper, and some sugar and let simmer for another 30 mins or so. Careful not to over-salt...