Poached Pears in Spiced Red Wine

After having a delicious appetizer- a salad stuffed poached pear with a goat cheese croquette at Stellina Pasta in St. Louis, I haven't been able to stop thinking about poached pears. Also since pears are in season now and the farmers market is basically right outside my door I thought I might as well try to make some myself. I looked at a bunch of different recipes online but ended up making up my own. I used a Zinfandel, which on the back was described as having "boysenberry, blackberry pie and vanilla notes" and while I can't say my palette is refined enough to pick out all those subtleties, I thought it worked well with the pears because of its sweetness.

Poached Pears in Spiced Red Wine
Ingredients
2 bartlett pears, peeled, cored and cut into thirds
2/3 bottle of Zinfandel (or enough to fully cover pears)
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves
1 tbsp brown sugar

Preparation
Pour 2/3 bottle of Zinfandel and all ingredients but pears into a medium pot over high heat. Peel and cut pears. Once the wine is boiling add pears and turn heat down to a simmer. Simmer pears for about 15 -20 minutes depending on how soft you want them and how hard/ ripe they were when you put them in. Using a slotted spoon remove pears from heat. You can put them in the refrigerator to chill and have later on salad or enjoy them hot with vanilla ice cream.

**I didn't want the spiced wine to go to waste so I continued to boil it until it reduced to about 1/3 cup. I'm thinking about using this as a glaze for meat, as a salad dressing, or on top of some vanilla ice cream.