Tuesday, January 19, 2010

#26 - Spanish-Style Beef Brisket & '07 Petalos


A revisit of what's probably our first real love: Spanish food with Spanish wine.

Food: Spanish-style beef brisket with green beans/almonds and pugliese bread with butter

Beef brisket cut stewed in smoked paprika, saffron, onions, tomatoes, sherry vinegar, thyme, garlic, olive oil, black pepper and Sicilian green olives.

Sautéed green beans and rustic-style bread with butter.

The brisket came off much lighter, brighter and more succulent than Mrs. Ney predicted. Really quite delicious; the kind of thing that makes you rue the time when it will be gone because then you can't eat more. The leftover brisket should make for great sandwiches.

Green beans became great when the brisket juice bled into them.

We'll be having this exact recipe again. Mrs. Ney found a good one and we're sticking to it.

Wine: 2007 Descendientes de Jose Palacios "Petalos" Bierzo - $17 WDC

Or just Petalos for short. Comes from the Bierzo region, an area just north of Portugal in northwest Spain. 100% Mencia grapes, a vine indigenous to the area with the vast majority still only grown in Bierzo.

It's a bit of a workhorse wine for weeknight meals. Cheap-ish yet plays above its price point.

Deep red in the glass, very little nose. A mixture of blackberry and a little cherry with a very pronounced sanguine quality that defines this one. Medium finish, nothing to write home about but overall, the Petalos is a lovely wine topped off with a hint of violets. Definitely needs food but with food, it explodes. All the elements come out to play and stay in harmony. Nothing dominates.

For $17 and with Spanish food - especially anything with a combo of smoked paprika, saffron and tomato, something that Spanish recipes have tons of - the Petalos is something to have on hand at all times. Just bloody good for the price.

Pairing: Matched up perfectly

The sanguine quality of the wine paired so entirely well with the brisket juice as it also had a light, bloody quality. Nothing about the brisket was big or heavy so the medium body and low tannins in the Petalos matched up structurally as well.

It's what you want in a pairing. A surprise to us, actually, on how well it worked. A bit of a happy accident.

But definitely drink Petalos with food. By itself...meh.

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