Friday, November 27, 2009

#7 - Clean Out The Fridge Chicken & '06 Neumayer GV

Pre-family Thanksgiving trip meal coupled with the third Austrian wine drank this month.

We don't usually drink this much Austrian wine. Or eat this much chicken, really.

Given the task of contributing to this year's family dinner, the vile concoction of seven-layer salad took up a lot of room in the refrigerator.

I had one bite of seven-layer salad. That was enough. But no Ney family gathering is apparently is complete without it. Mayo, cheese, bacon, peas, green pepper, iceberg and onion. Why?

So it was "clean out the fridge" day to make some room for said salad to let those flavor "marry" overnight. Ugh.

Food: Tarragon Mustard Chicken Breasts with Baby Potatoes, Leeks and Asparagus

A very French-inspired meal that is a bit of a spring/summer staple in the Ney house usually accompanied with something from the Loire.

Herby chicken crusted with Anton Kozlik tarragon mustard picked up in Toronto. It's an institution in Toronto from what we hear. Didn't know that when we bought it and five other flavors. I will say that they're quite good and worth trying (maple is ridiculously good with ham sandwiches) while being infinitely better than the hype surrounding Cleveland's Stadium mustard.

Baby potatoes with tarragon mayo for dipping, sautéed leeks and asparagus spears.

Wine: 2006 Neumayer Grüner Veltliner Zwirch - $15 Wine Discount Center

Pretty straightforward. Loads of green apple and a bit of lemon with food-friendly acidity.

If blindfolded, it would be tough to pin down as to location and varietal. Might be an odd Spanish but not enough lime. Might be a Sancerre but not Frenchy enough. I think I could have eventually gone to Grüner, but merely as a possibility but would have never been able to peg it.

Tasting notes on this one talk about chalk and mineral with tarragon and mint. Certainly some chalk and mineral, I guess, but as for the tarragon and mint, it's a wine that shows the overall profile of being able to display those herbs but never gets there. Could be me because only in very rare circumstances do I get things of that sort in a white.

After saying that, it's a fine little wine for $15. One of those wines that you wouldn't pay above $20 but, in my fairly limited Grüner experience, it's worth it.

Best way to describe it would possibly be a Spanish white aspiring for a French delicacy.

Pairing: Nothing wrong with that

It wasn't going to clash. It's chicken and a not overly dry white wine.

Some surprises showed up, though. The wine became more citrusy with the tarragon mustard and tarragon mayo. Nothing in the meal was over the top with huge, bold flavors. It was more nicely subtle as it was supposed to be. And the wine had a finesse. Maybe not elegant but definitely had finesse.

In other words, a pleasant, food-friendly white for $15 to go with a better than expected, clean-out-the-fridge chicken.



Other another note, in the effort to keep a thorough record, I need to mention another meal that was too long ago (five days) to get into details. Simply don't remember all the info.

But a green bean stir fry with pork pot stickers paired with the wine mentioned below was above all expectation.

2006 Spreitzer Riesling Kabinett Rheingau Oestricher Lenchen - $20-ish WDC

A tad more sweet than the Grüner Veltliner above but not a sweet German riesling. Apple again but great background tropical fruits and acidity with a wonderful balance.

We'll be buying more.

Like Austrian wine labels, German wine terms confuse me all to hell. So...

Terms:

Kabinett - light style, naturally semi-sweet, lowest level of ripeness, lower alcohol, refreshing
Rheingau - oldest wine region near the Rhine. Small area with many top producers
Oestricher Lenchen - vineyard name

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

#6 - Wine Can Duck & '06 Archery Summit Premier Cuvée

We'll get over the wine can fascination at some point but, for right now, it's quite delicious.

Little in this world is better than well-prepared, medium-rare duck. Along with PB & Js and watching the Cubs lose, it will never get old.

Well-done duck in any form, I can take or leave. But when Aldi has whole ducks for $12 and the wine can world so recently opened itself up to us, Mrs. Ney pounced on the occasion to give it a go.

With the possibility of this being a colossal failure, though, we had multiple back-up plans.

The alternatives were not needed. Wine can duck works.

Food: Wine Can Duck with Farro and Shaved Brussels Sprouts

Duck done with white wine and the usual herbal compliment.

Farro with chestnuts and shallots, nutmeg and thyme. Chestnuts to simulate the deliciousness that comes with farro and mushrooms without the mushrooms.

Shaved Brussels sprouts sautéed in bacon fat and mixed with bacon and Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Pomegranate seeds sprinkled over the entire plate.

Duck = great. If $12 Aldi duck presents itself again, it would be an option. Whole duck elsewhere is probably too expensive for what you would get, but the light glaze based in cherry jam made it taste greater than the sum of its parts. Avec had a shaved Brussels sprout small plate on the menu this summer that made us return to Brussels sprouts. But this preparation was the best I've ever had. Pomegranate seeds brought a brightness for me that elevated everything.

Overall, while Mrs. Ney was marginally pessimistic about the venture, it turned out to be a pretty great meal.

Wine: 2006 Archery Summit Premier Cuvée - $35 Binny's

Sourced from four different vineyards, the premier cuvée is essentially the house wine from one of Oregon's best producers, the cheaper non-single-vineyard wine from grapes that didn't make the single-vineyard cut.

We had this wine before, Mrs. Ney loved it and I was confused by it. I seem to remember this being a darker wine with spice, orange peel and earth flying around everywhere (probably melding it in my brain with Ken Wright Savoya, another one I came to understand later). Mrs. Ney remembered an elegance that came with soft cherry and nice acidity.

Mrs. Ney's recollection was right on. Lighter red in the glass, it had a soft purity of fruit that intermingled with a touch of spice and a graceful acidity. Had a spine that didn't demand attention. Burgundian might be a good descriptor but had a cleanness of New World pinot noir.

It evolved nicely with the food, going from the definition of a pleasant softness with lightly acidic cherry to some Asian (?) spice with more acidity to a tad tart toward the end over the course of an hour.

Alone, after the meal, a lot of forest floor. Nothing great.

Pairing: Well Above Average

Would certainly do it again. With the duck, everything was in line if not sublime. Played like pinot noir properly should with duck without offering any real surprises. Not a bad thing. Duck and pinot noir is the ultimate food and wine match in so many ways.

Oddly, the Brussels sprouts with bacon and parmesan made for the best pairing. The wine's fruit exploded followed by an acidity that made the wine's finish gone on much longer than any other food. Seemed like the pomegranate seeds brought out different red fruits outside of the usual cherry. Slightly sweet berry?

With roast duck, no red pairing is really out of bounds. Adding a touch of chocolate to the glaze would probably have made for a wonderful Bordeaux pairing. Herb it up a bit more and a Chateauneuf-Du-Pape might have been nice.

We went a tad traditional and it was entirely enjoyable.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

#5 - Wine Can Chicken & '96 Heredia White


If you haven't tried a R. López de Heredia wine, do so.

It's the benchmark for old-style Rioja. The winery only releases their wines when they think they're ready to drink so they typically don't hit the market until ten years after the vintage. Just three years ago, they finally released their 1981 Bosconia red. It's what they do.

Their reds are easily in the top three of our favorite wines and the whites aren't too far behind.

About a year ago, we got our hands on three of their '78 Heredia Bosconias at a ridiculously cheap price and I can still remember every sip. All dried cherry, liquid mushroom and dust that dramatically changed every 15 minutes. Great stuff.

Their whites are made from the Viura grape (Macabeo by another name) and are all honey and nuts with the fruit playing second fiddle (dried pear, dried apple?). Dry with medium to low acidity. Kinda like sherry. Reminiscent of a Savennières in a lot of ways in that both are unlike any other white wine you've ever had. They're both wonderfully perplexing in a pretty great way.

Food: Wine Can Chicken with Saffron Risotto

Our third wine can chicken in three weeks because it's delicious. Honey and Rosemary jam glaze served on mâche with saffron risotto.

The glaze was more subtle this time, which was probably a good thing with the wine. Best of the three WCCs so far.

Saffron risotto was an ideal match with the wine.

Wine: 1996 Robert López de Heredia Viña Gravonia - $23 Wine Discount Center

It's cheap, delicious and, if you haven't had it, unlike anything you've ever had.

Like I said, Heredia is what old-style Rioja is all about. As Spain gravitated toward bigger wines with more extracted fruit to satisfy the world market, Heredia held firm to its roots. They've been making the same style wine since its inception and the Spanish wine world is just now starting to come back to the Heredia style. Or at least to the point of understanding and respecting the virtues of it.

Eric Asimov of the New York Times Pour Blog can tell the story better than I can.

Some info:

The single vineyards:

Tondonia - predominantly red - in the Burgundy style, softer, lighter - some white in a tiny corner

Bosconia - red - tend to be a bit bigger, more fruit forward

The bottle shape was a mixup at the winery years ago, according to Asimov. They wanted Tondonia in Burgundy bottles and Bosconia in Bordeaux, someone screwed it up and they just stuck with it.

Gravonia - vineyard, white wine

Crianza - a wine that has spent one year in oak barrels

Reserva - a wine that has been aged for two years, one of which has to be in oak

Gran Reserva - a wine aged two years in oak and three years in the bottle

Pairing: Always good with Spanish-style white meat, spectacular with anything saffron

For the first time, it took a bit for the dust to blow off on this wine. Five minutes maybe. After it did, all the honey and nuts came through. Fruit was a little more dried than the last time we had this. As with most good Spanish wine, it pairs perfectly with any food Spanish-influenced.

The saffron risotto pairing was perfect, just sublime. The chicken was right behind it. Mrs. Ney found an explosive mulchy note that kicked up with the oil-cured black olives spread over the top and in the risotto.

It seems that, quite possibly, the '96 might be winding down. Something almost tobacco-y about it. Seemed to lose some of the structure it previously had and it was a tad hollow on its own. Still worth every minute and the changes were barely perceptible but it seemed to be closing up to me. Better than 95% of the white wine out there, though, in my world.

1999s are still out there at the same cheap price.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

#4 - Lamb & '04 Bodegas Astrales + Something Else


Let me tell you about homemade Limoncello.

It's...a process.

In my brief foray into the homemade Limoncello field, it's always been better than store-bought Caravella brand, but, as I said, it's a process (is this the place I grossly and quite drunkenly misspell things? Me thinks so.).

Too much homemade Limoncello. I do not recommend it.

Onto the meal.

Food: Maple-coffee-soy marinated lamb with fingerling (?) potatoes, snap peas and the largest blackberries you ever saw

Whole Foods lamb which, honestly, was uncharacteristically a little fatty/expensive but good with Harvest Time gigantic blackberries and what I suspect was fingerling potatoes. I don't know. I didn't ask Mrs. Ney. Speaking of Mrs. Ney, she took the coffee-soy marinade, boiled it and whipped up a coffee-soy mayonnaise for potato dipping.

Delicious.

Wine: 2004 Bodegas Astrales Ribera Del Duero - $44 Wine Discount Center

Ribera wines tend to be a bit bigger than Spanish Rioja wines, more dark purple, emphasizing blacker fruits compared to Rioja with a tinge of wildness involved. Essentially, Ribera fits a well-crafted niche, crafting wines bursting with concentrated blackberry and darkish fruits with more coffee notes than most and an earthy background without ever approaching the French-style obvious earthiness.

We have a decent amount of experience with Ribera wines and what you get is typically a wild wine, something resembling a horse-bucking journey. They always stay rather firm with the food in front of you, never deviating from what it's supposed to be but it's the subtle changes, especially with the meat itself, that draw you in.

Put an aggressive crust and marinade on any red meat and Ribera will treat you well. It hits all the same notes that good Portuguese wines tend to (cigar, spice box, licorice) while holding firm to its black fruit roots.

We decanted the last Astrales we had and it could have used it. After 30 minutes, it started to display a beautiful character that made me lament the lack of this decanting.

Why no decanting? Well, we started with a 2006 Blue Eyed Boy Shiraz that was probably cooked. No nuance whatsoever. At least nowhere near the nuance we remember from this wine, which was huge, bright, juicy and wonderful black fruits which sailed on forever. Humongous finish, usually, reminiscent of homemade blackberry jam. Didn't happen this time. It was flat.

Astrales will always be a favorite. I would love to put one aside for a few years and see what happens. Better yet, I would love to try this wine as it leaps toward a graceful death.


Pairing: With time, it was wonderful.

Bodegas Astrales is what Ribera Del Duero wine is all about. At least given the scope of the ones we've had. There's always something enigmatic about it. You get/understand the primary flavors but...there's something there. Something earthy without screaming earth. Something like bush ("That's what she said!") and the briary elements you get from Rhone wines but not so...Rhone-ish...without a trace of red fruits to be found. ALL. BLACK.

In the end, it tasted wild/untamed but let the food play with it in spite of itself.

After the meal, with a little left in the glass, it was all licorice, a great finish to a nice meal.

Too bad I topped it off with homemade Limoncello. I'm already scheduling a headache for tomorrow.

#3 - Indie Café & '06 Gross Sauvignon Blanc Sulz


Monday night is our Friday night in the Ney household.

Quick and good Monday dinner options are sparse in the city but there's a few we like.

Kuma's is always on the table. We're fans of Semiramis. Avec always gets the seasonal visit and Blackbird, our favorite restaurant, is made that much better by being open on Monday.

But one of the best values in the city on any day is Indie Café on Broadway, just south of Granville: Criminally cheap, nice atmosphere, pleasant staff, fresh ingredients and clean, well-prepared food.

It's Japanese and Thai, something you think would suffer from trying to be all things to all people but never does. It's a universal North Side favorite.

Pairing wine with sushi can be mildly difficult, mostly because you never know which direction you're going to go in until you get there. But some basic rules apply.

At its most basic, white wine is the norm, but a nice case could be made for rosés and a fruity sparkling. You want something dry or off-dry with a nice crispness and something that brings acidity and nice, bright citrus fruits to the party.

Riesling and Grüner Veltliner are the typically recommended selections. An Albariño would be nice - though I've never tried it with sushi - and Italian whites, especially often-neglected Southern Italian varietals like Falanghina and Greco would probably be great (haven't tried those either with sushi). In the end, delicate whites are going to get gobbled up so bring something with a spine that's not Chardonnay. Don't even let red enter the discussion.

We went with an Austrian Sauvignon Blanc just for poops and cackles.


Food: Rangoon, Wonton, Tuna, Duck and Salmon

Crab Rangoon
Chicken Wonton Crisps
"Mexico City" Maki - Tuna, whitefish, cucumber, avocado, jalapeño, chili, tempura...
Hawaiian Duck Curry
Ginger Salmon with soy sauce and scallion

Usually, we go a bit more in the raw vegetable vein at Indie with more dishes ordered as well. Essentially, we ordered what we wanted to eat, pairing be damned.

I finished it off with green tea ice cream, of which I could eat a bucket. Just leave me alone in the corner with an entire bucket. Don't bother me. And I don't even really like green tea.


Wine: 2006 Gross Sauvignon Blanc Sulz - $11 Wine Discount Center

We never had an Austrian Sauvignon Blanc before and figured what the hell. They're a bit rare.

By itself, it has the typical grassy notes you get from a Sauvignon Blanc but with a little more delicacy found in a New World style. Kinda between a New Zealand and a Sancerre in weight and intensity but with a pleasant oily finish, a cross between olive oil and motor oil. Light herbs in the background with a fruit note that was probably honeydew and grapefruit (I don't know) with enough acidity. Nothing spectacular outside of a nice change of pace.

Pairing: Fair to middling, leaning towards bad

Interesting with the maki, oddly intriguing yet short with rice and curry. No on the duck and hell no with soy sauce. Fine with the crab rangoon and the best with the chicken wonton.

Bit of a mishmash but the unique oily quality was marginally worth the trip.

Wouldn't do it again.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

#2 - Church Cookbook Chicken Lasagna & '08 Castle Rock Pinot Noir


Now for our first installment of pairing terrible food with cheap wine.

Church Cookbook Weekly died a quick death over at the BRE but one recipe still had to be made.

Food: Chicken Lasagna

Barely lasagna as the only thing included that also is included in actual lasagna is lasagna noodles, it's basically a garbage casserole. Chicken, cheddar cheese, stuffing (?), a can of cream of chicken soup and paprika. Notice. Tomatoes in any form are not included.

Thursday is quick-and-easy food night. It's our Monday in the Ney household. But it was nice out and the Bears were on (it affects business, not because I wanted to watch the putrid performance) so I took the night off.

We wandered through a few pairing ideas (cheap Italian, value Burgundy) before coming to the time-honored understanding that you can't put lipstick on a pig. Food that we'll most likely regret after putting it in our mouths should be paired with wine in the same price realm.

So...

Wine: 2008 Castle Rock Pinot Noir Willamette Valley - $12 Trader Joe's

Castle Rock Winery makes basically every varietal wine all over the West Coast with Trader Joe's being one of their biggest retailers. They target the low-end price point, try to bring value and largely succeed in that. On Vino plans to a Trader Joe's value wine feature soon.

On the nose, I got pumpernickel. Never got that so obviously before in a wine. Fruit comes off as what you would expect from a lower-end Willamette Valley Pinot Noir - darker cherry and a bit of red raspberry with a little cinnamon and something approaching a floral note. No surprises.

But with this wine, it's in what you didn't get for the price. No odd greenish, stemmy quality, no medicinal note and no screwed-up tannins, fulfilling the basic definition of a value Oregon Pinot Noir. You could easily do worse.

Pairing: Meh

But it wasn't the wine's fault. Church Cookbook Chicken Lasagna has shut the door on our brief dalliance with canned soup for kitsch purposes. I feel like crap right now.

Essentially, we settled on Pinot Noir because of the stuffing, consulting an excellent basic pairing guide given by WineSense that details what wine grape pairs with things like herbs, meat, cheese, etc.. It's valuable as a nice starting point. Check it out. Sage with pinot noir? Stuffing? (?) No tomatoes? Sure, why not?

While we recognized the low acidity level in the lasagna from the recipe, the finished product offered no acid at all, making the pairing dead on arrival.

But there was some interplay. An herbal note kicked up in the wine from the stuffing and the food did negate a slight syrupy quality that we got from the wine on its own. Also, anything heavier would have been just awful.

Lesson: If you're going to have terrible food and are going to drink wine - be mindful of body, try to match herbs and for all that is holy, don't spend.

Better yet, just avoid terrible food.

#1 - Wine Can Chicken & '99 Prager


Food: Wine Can Chicken

Quickly making its way into our rotation, Wine Can Chicken is simple. Take a soda can (I think I've made the transition from 'pop' to 'soda.' Got sick of the looks.) and fill it 2/3 of the way with a decent, cheap white wine and fill the rest with whatever herbs you want/have within reach.

Mrs. Ney used herbs de Provence, more rosemary, lemongrass and orange blossom water if I recall correctly.

Stick the can up the chicken's rear, prop it upright so it looks like it might come alive and stick it in the oven.

The glaze for the chicken was Asian-ish since Riesling pairs so well with such things, comprised of a soy sauce, hoisin, ginger beer reduction with salt.

All of it was served on mâche with baguette and butter.

Wine: 1999 Prager Riesling Weissenkirchen Smaragd Steinreigl - $16 Wine Discount Center

Why so cheap for a '99 Austrian Riesling from a good house? Probably because most of the reviews for the bottle consider it to be past its drinking window.

Robert Parker of Wine Advocate:

The 1999 Riesling Smaragd Weißenkirchen Steinriegl has a mineral-dominated nose. This medium-bodied, silky-textured and tangy wine is redolent with lemony minerals,quinine, and flowers. This admirably balanced wine should be consumed the next 7-9 years.
Other places on these internets had it for upwards of $45 so we figured why not? We've had this 2005 before and loved it.

Here's what the terms on the bottle mean purely for the purpose of forcing me to learn this stuff:

Wachau: Highly-respected Austrian region known for its Rieslings and Grüners

Smaragd: Wachau-specific designation. Has to do with when the grapes can be picked, when the wine can be released and has the highest alcohol level (> 12.5%), low sugar level, typically the richest and driest (compared to Federspiel with an alcohol level between 11.5 & 12.5% and Steinfeder below that). Order = Steinfeder (light, racy), Federspiel (elegant, medium-bodied) and Smaragd (ripe, full-bodied)

Steinriegl: Particular vineyard/area

Weissenkirchen: City near Steinriegl

By golly, that seems excessively complicated. Here's a pretty good primer.

Pairing: It worked quite well

I don't have oodles of experience with being able to immediately recognize with complete authority whether a wine is past its prime, but the fruit was drying out, almost completely there.

But there was still a liveliness to this wine, especially when the salt came to the party, bringing out it's acidity. What I saw as hints of smoke and nuts, Mrs. Ney saw as a butterscotchy element (she has an infinitely better palate than me). Dried peaches and a little spice with a tiny floral note (?) as well.

Oddly, it paired best with the baguette and butter, making me think if it would be best drank as a pre-dinner aperitif kinda thingy with a lil snack.

In the end, though, the wine didn't conflict at all, stood up to everything and brought an pleasing element to the table. Reminded me of the Robert Lopez de Heredia whites not in its flavor profile but in what brings to a pairing - a dried element that is expressed first in its fruit and secondary flavors and it's style second. Wasn't bone-dry, rather something approaching off-dry (?) and everything was still rather focused. Deep yellow in the glass that resembled urine.

We just bought four more bottles to watch this one die a nice death.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

The Reason


No reason, really.

Mostly, we at the Ney household have tried a wine and food log probably five times. Never stuck. So this is an exercise attempting to catalogue things in an easily searchable format, something I can quickly whip out in the morning after waking up while last night's meal is still fresh in the melon.

I'm 37, bald as all get out, wait tables and really like wine.

I'm under no illusion that anybody else will care but, if you happen to, well, like the structure of the NBA playoffs, everyone's a winner!

Some background. I'm nowhere close to an expert. I've been around wine in the restaurant business, watching people chew, for 13 years now but I only became what would be considered seriously into it five years ago. Sure, I know my grapes, where they're from, what I like, what I tolerate and what I pretty much hate.

There's a saying in golf that applies. If you're a bogey golfer, you're better than 85% of the golfers out there. But that doesn't mean you're a good golfer. Everything's relative. When it comes to knowing wine, I would conservatively say that I merely have a pretty solid baseline.

This will be an attempt to actually track a gloriously wonderful process and joy: Food and wine. What worked. What didn't. What could have worked if.... And what had no chance in hell of working ever in the history of history.

I can't tell you my favorite wine. Probably depends on the food. Plus, I don't think I can say with any degree of certainty what that one bottle is. Still working on that.

Right now, overall, it trends toward French. Loire with a Chenin Blanc bent, Right Bank Bordeaux but...Spanish always, Portuguese Douro table wine (Quinta do Vale Meao, still chasing the 2007 Duorum Reserva), Oregon Pinot Noir (Ponzi, Ken Wright) and a new jag that we're only now discovering is quasi-cult California Syrah (Sanguis).

So...we'll see. Might be fun. Who knows? I can learn, pass it along, maybe you'll be compelled and you can teach me things.

In it's basic form, wine is good. And good wine is freakin' transcendent!

Why not write about it?

First up: Wine Can Chicken! with mâche and baguette with a 1999 Prager Smaragd Steinreigl Riesling.

Wine Can Chicken is quickly becoming a staple in the Ney household. Because it's delicious. All that gobbledygook after Prager I knew for about two weeks two years ago and promptly forgot the meanings behind it. All I remember is that it's an Austrian Riesling in the dry style and we got a great deal on it at Wine Discount Center on Elston for $15.99 a bottle.

First report tomorrow.