#240 - Linguiça, Potato-Kale Hash & Manchego With '07 Vallado Tinto

In July of 2010, we paired this wine with duck leg stew and a tapa spread.

Delicious wine by itself then, but not delicious with the food.

I remember the flavors and pairing of that meal pretty well.  Reading that post now after seeing how this wine showed last night, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't ready to go a year and a half ago.  Tannins were just opening and becoming accommodating enough then but everything else hadn't come out of its shell quite yet.  Throw on a gravy-like duck leg entrée and the fact that Portuguese reds typically scream for food less subtle and stewish, I don't think the wine had much of a chance.

Portuguese reds want simple, bold flavors with less complete integration.  They want a little char, a little bitter, a little starch.  They want rustic to match their rustic guts and then use that as a launching pad to expand out from there.

Last night's meal was that and the wine was true to form.  Textbook, really.  Mrs. Ney nailed it.  The wine tasted like War by itself.  All iron and blood with churned up earth.  With a bite of potato-kale hash and linguiça, an expanding balloon of dark but sparkly and round plum completed the delicious frame and turned this wine into one of the best showings of a $20 wine we've ever had.

I thought this wine was worth every bit of the $20 price tag a year and a half ago but probably not much more.  I was wrong.  This one's plays well above its price and has plenty of drinking life ahead.

Food:  Linguiça, potato-kale hash, marinated manchego, fig-almond cake and baguette

#239 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Family.

That's all I gotta say 'bout that.

So Merry Christmas-Happy Holidays to everyone out there looking for a wine pairing and stumbling across our humble little website.  Or if you've somehow been redirected from a dental implant (?) site as it says in my statistics page.  The mind is awhirl with ideas how THAT happened.

Wooly bubbles, an out-of-this-world bargain Eiswein, a disappointing Heredia and Hema's Kitchen made at home highlight this week's roundup.

Let's get started.

Meal #1 - Pork liver pâté, Chaource cheese and baguette with Anselmann blanc de noir Eiswein & Ayala Zero Dosage Champagne

#238 - Short Ribs in Ancho-Pumpkin Mole & Potato Far With An '08 Quinta Cruz Touriga Nacional

Ever had an ancho-pumpkin mole, a starch that tastes like crêpe batter and shredded potatoes had a baby and then washed it down with blackberry licorice juice?

We have.  Last night.

Tasted like we tried a restaurant in some niche neighborhood in west Chicago where French-Hungarians settled decades ago but heavy influence from Mexico seeped in and someone decided to open a place that catered to both.

And it was delicious.

Food:  Short ribs in ancho-pumpkin mole, salty-sweet potato far and arugula with pomegranate seeds

#237 - Thomas Keller Buttermilk Fried Chicken & Onion Biscuits With NV Pierre Péters Blancs de Blancs

Continuing the jones theme.

More bubbles, this time with fried chicken, a pairing that fits like a glove in many eyes.

Last November, a first run at TK fried chicken achieved that with a Királyudvar sparkling.  That sparkler brought some great acid with dominant peach pit and grapefruit notes, supporting the chicken, wedge salad and buttermilk biscuits, keeping everything lifted, 3-D and surprisingly light. Good food memory there.

Here we had a more fancy, idiosyncratic bubbly offering flavors we didn't expect from a 100% chardonnay.  Cherry pit followed by white raspberry describes the evolution with more traditional citrus, yeast and toasted baguette serving as the backbone down deep.  Less friendly mix and mingle with the food as last November's success but nothing that clashed in the least.

Food:  Thomas Keller buttermilk fried chicken, onion biscuits and mâche with pomegranate seeds

#236 - Hanger, Latkes & Rapini With '08 Owen Roe Yakima Red + Anteprima

Champagne and Washington expect to get a lot of play in our house over the next few months.  They're our current jones, it seems.

Washington wines, in our limited experience of 10-15 bottles or so over the last few years, seem to be less about the winemaker, like so many California wines (and even Oregon wines to an extent), and more about the land.  An Old World sensibility really does come through with an inevitable New World freshness merely outlining the body.

More restraint and hands-off construction and less chasing of that one-note, unibody flavor so loved by so many.  Less easily identifiable flavors and more mystery brought on by not screwing with it so much.

Our nascent exposure to Washington wines has been a good one, something that seems to have opened a floodgate of sorts.  We're on board.

I've sort of jumped off the Bordeaux train lately due to expense, its food limitations and, on a certain level, boredom.  It's such a niche wine not exactly lined up with the food we typically eat.  But Washington, a wine region that pays homage left and right to Bordeaux blends and tradition, seems to be broadening that a bit with wines offering a wider food basket its wines can match up with.  They're less...rigid.

#235 - Still Alive!

Geesh!  It's been a month (?).

An annoyingly lingering month-long cold and the lack of greenbacks in the wallet lately has led to the absence of good food and wine in our house.  No point spending money on stuff we can't taste.

But things seem to be back to normal for the most part so two easy favorites were right and proper to jump back on the tasting horse.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and basil with baguette and two sparklers

I extolled the virtues of Trader Joe's pre-packaged marinated mozzarella in olive oil and herbs a few weeks ago as a near-perfect quick and easy lunch option.  Marinating your own seemed to be an exercise in willingly wasting your time when something that good came so easy and fresh.  Mrs. Ney gave it a shot anyway...just to know.  The result was something just as good, but work.  Better mozzarella but not by much.  Better olive oil but not by much.  She gussied up the TJ's version with fresh tomatoes/kumatoes in the past so a freshness was still present and wanted, even needed.  In the end, part of the joy in this type of meal is the spontaneity.  No thinking about it the day before and prepping.  It's probably the best buy and eat lunch in our world right now.  Grab a baguette and bubbles and there's little that creates a break from a workweek quicker than this.

#234 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

About two months ago, a meal of Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with an '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint led us to thinking we'd just had the best grüner veltliner ever.

Graceful, nuanced and delicious at every turn.

So much so that I rushed out the next day and bought two more bottles.  Now, it's only been two months and we saw a touch of acid depletion in that first experience but this week's drinking of that bottle left me perplexed.

The acid two months ago ever so tenuously kept it in the world of delicious in great ways, coming off like a healthy Mickey Mantle, the later years.  This week, Mick's knees buckled trying to stretch of single into a double and it feels like he'll never be the same again.

Without the tiny acid lift, we got flab, flab and more flab tasting like the cheapest of cheap that had been left open in the fridge for days.  One more left.  Maybe it was just a bad bottle but nothing in the way of food flavors tried with two different flavor worlds did anything to make it remotely interesting.

Let's get to it.

#233 - Flank Steak, Cuban Beans & Sweet Potato Fries With '09 Ex Umbris

Freezer food!

And delicious freezer food it was, geared toward drinking a New World syrah, which was once again wanted and craved by both of us.

Funky that after drinking wine pretty seriously for years that an entirely new craving and joy can come from a style of wine already explored and somewhat dismissed.

Like many things in life, keeping an open mind and returning to explore the foundations of previously firm opinions just to see if they continue to be just is not only important but necessary.  It keeps one young, allowing intellectual curiosity to continue to be a driving force.

Tying such a thing to wine seems to be a bit much but in a small way, I have been surprised by our new embrace of California/Washington syrah.  Sure, we loved Australian shiraz in the past, even some California syrah, and still do but moved away from them in favor of lower alcohol, more idiosyncratic and many times terroir-driven wines, as many people do (and don't shut up about) as they progress up the chain of wine love.

Our recent dalliance/return in/to the bigger style feels like something that, in some form, will stay.

Here's why.

Food:  Flank steak, Cuban black beans and chipotle sweet potato fries

#232 - Spanish Niçoise-y Salad, Greek Feta & Carrot Purée With '09 Síria

Fancy stuff, in the food and in the wine.

The fancy came from the purity and abundance of flavors and the ability to taste every one of them in any given bite.

The tastes:  carrots, anchovies, parsley, honey, mint, harissa, thyme-infused olive oil, pickled onions, sesame seeded Syrian bread, feta, kumatoes, Greek black olives, caraway seeds, pink peppercorns, garlic, lemon juice, dill.

So Greeky, kinda Spanishy, bit of North African, all comprising a tapas-y type feel, a little dip here, a bite there and loving every bit of it.

Served with a wine made from a grape new to us as a 100% bottling and possessing a balance, vitality and Portuguese weirdness that slid right into the food in delicious and new ways.

Food:  Spanish-y Niçoise salad, greek feta in honey and pink peppercorns, carrot purée, thyme-infused olive oil and Syrian bread 

#231 - Two Birthday Meals

Insert Jack Benny joke here.

Like...for the condition that must exist before the joke starts ad infinitum.

For a birthday such as that, two of the classics, or new classics, or...heck, just two meals that we've come to immensely enjoy seemed apt, right and proper.

Italian lunch and sort of Cuban dinner.

And sandwiched between both meals was an Iowa loss to Minnesota so Happy Birthday to me, indeed.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella and kumatoes with baguette

#230 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New puppy in the house.  She came with everything that comes in the new puppy package.

Mostly good, though.  Promising.  Quite promising.  We think we like her.

Three meals and three wines this week, given a TWIB post to highlight two new wines that we very much enjoyed, even if they weren't something that evoked splendor in the glass (see what I did there...).

Meal #1:  TJ's $4 roasted chicken, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, baguette and butter

#229 - Pancetta Lamb, Pea Purée & Potatoes With '06 Ken Wright

Let's get link-happy.

We've mostly eaten our lamb in a supporting cast sense this year, using it as a protein to complement an interesting recipe here (Turkish beany surprise) and/or to try an ignored grape/style there (cabernet franc/Amarone).

We've had it out in the world this year (-ish) at Taxim (sausage form) and Blackbird (saddle form/rack form) and didn't have it out at Bacchus, unfortunately.

Or, when lamb was made to be the star of a meal, something like a potato-kale cake, fregola and carrot purée or, well, Turkish beany surprise, came along and stole its thunder.

Back to the lamb basics last night:  Lamb made to complement the lamb, support the lamb and star the lamb with flavors leaning more toward clean American.

When that happens, it's pinot noir.  Tried and true, always delicious and tastes like Home, tradition, holiday, friendship and Love ("To every season, turn, turn, turn...").

Food:  Pancetta-wrapped lamb, pea purée, pomegranate seeds and roasted potatoes with mâche salad

#228 - Moroccan Phyllo Pie With '08 François Villard Condrieu

If you'd asked me two weeks ago where Condrieu is located, I'd have guessed southeastern France.

And that's about as specific as I could have been.

Squeezed between Côte-Rôtie and Saint-Joseph in the northern reaches of Northern Rhône, Condrieu and its surrounding AOCs represent a huge blind spot in my wine world.  Heck, red Burgundy, much of Northern Italy and the Northern Rhône...you may as well be talking about carburetors and manifolds or something because I'm clueless.  All of it shoots right over my head.

That will change in time.  It's usually some unassuming bottle bought on a whim that cracks the code of a region/AOC/style, sending us scurrying to find out more.

This François Villard viognier might be one of those bottles.

Delicious, fairly unique stuff that if given blind, I'd have thought it was a white Burgundy in many ways from some Burgundy AOC I know nothing about.

Hate to get wine-sappy here but that's one of the great things about wine.  There's always a new surprise.  Always something you've never had.  Always something you didn't know.

Food:  B'stilla - Moroccan phyllo pie with arugula and pomegranate seeds

#227 - Dry-Aged Filet And Potato Cakes With '05 Clos Apalta

Anniversary Dinner!  Number Seven.

Crap.  Now I have the Grizzly Adams theme song in my head.

With a sick dog, we didn't have the option to celebrate the occasion out on the town, but last night we got flavors that didn't taste like home flavors, so mission accomplished in many ways.

A carménère/cabernet blend is not home flavors (or 'out' flavors either).

A roasted vegetable chimichurri.  Not home flavors.

A zucchini/carrot veg medley.  Not home flavors.

The whole meal didn't taste like home and we liked it.

Don't need it again but we liked it.

Food:  21 day dry-aged beef filet, potato cakes and zucchini/carrot medley with chimichurri

#226 - Two Meals And Two Wines

Last night's wine was an example of a wine made so much better by the fact that both of us wanted nothing but California syrah.

Rare thing, that; wanting California syrah to such a degree.  Sometimes, satisfying a yen jettisons the opinion of a wine from the "yeah...good stuff" realm into the "that's the best thing I've ever had in the history of history!" silly superlative world even if it merely shows typical, open and proper.

The key came in the non-fancy fancy food with flavors on the plate we haven't had before, which was the goal of the meal.

And what flavors they were.  The collection of Iberian peninsula cookbooks continues to amaze.

Food:  Spicy Azorean garlic-roasted pork with fideos, black olive gremolata and pickled onions

#225 - Flank Steak, Duck Fat Potatoes and Toscano Cheese With '04 Vale Meão

I still surprised how medium-bodied this wine was.

Every review for every Quinta Do Vale Meão wine talks about its 'richness' and 'powerful body.'  We always got something leading towards richness and power but they always pulled back from the edge at the right time so words like 'finesse' and 'grace' and a 'pretty touch of earth' were always bandied about.

Big, full, rich wines can of course (and do) have those elements but in the context of liking a wine, for us, those words denote something that isn't really big, full and rich.

Vale Meão wines always love to have a dalliance with bigness and fullness but, in the end, come back to what they are:  their own unique place of the very definition of the top end of medium-bodied - flavors that evoke richness with a body to balances all that out.  The really good ones charge right up to the full-bodied line, taunt the big boys on the other side and then just stay there, taunting, "Look what we can do! Screw your extraction!"

Having said that, the 2004 is and has been for us closer to the world of a standard medium-bodied than we expect from Vale Meão, even missing some of the aspects we love about their wines, in particular a touch of Asian spice and a hidden surprise 2/3 of the way down.

Food:  Flank Steak, duck fat potatoes and Toscano cheese with an arugula salad

#224 - Bill Kim-Inspired Pork Stir Fry With '09 Selbach-Oster Riesling

A stir fry sauce inspired by the lamb and brandy dumpling filling from Urban Belly on California drove the meal last night.

And after the success we had with riesling (Hirtzberger Smaragd Hochrain) at Urban Belly in December, a return was welcome, if a bit off the mark in pairing terms.

The slight miss came from the sugar in the Selbach-Oster Spätlese as it needed more acid/spice from the food to balance things out and the fact that, for now, the higher level of sugar in this Spätlese just isn't our bag.

The wine bullied the meal a bit, we liked the food much more than the wine by itself and we missed a salty/mineral play and higher acid that we want from white wine right now.  That about sums it up.

An Austrian Smaragd was the play here after having the meal.  Such is life.

Food:  Bill Kim-inspired pork stir fry over polenta

#223 -TK Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '00 Gaston Chiquet

A treasure trove of Spanish, Portuguese and Canary Island goodness arrived yesterday from our San Francisco trip and a visit to the Spanish Table in Berkeley.

Should be a tasty, Iberian-inspired winter.

Time to play catch-up.

A standard Thomas Keller chicken meal went through the stratosphere with the second-best Champagne we've ever had.

Food:  TK Chicken, Chaource cheese and baguette with mâche

More modifications to the TK chicken as Mrs. Ney finds a happy balance between deliciousness and breezy prep.  Good one here.  Might be a keeper.

#222 - Duck, Farro, Oranges & Green Olives With '02 Heredia Bosconia

As López de Heredia typically releases their reds eight to nine years after the vintage, we've recently had a bit of an Oreo cookie experience in terms of superlative Heredia goodness.

Serving as the cream, it was the 2001 Bosconia that blew us away two Augusts ago, served with patatas bravas, linguiça and Iberico ham, Idiazabal cheese and arugula.

Serving as one chocolate cookie, the 2000 Bosconia was helped along immensely by the lavender lamb, piquillo marmalade, pistachio fregola and asparagus but showed a dark, brooding nature and those signature tea tannins wrapped in cinnamon and hints of orange peel that make Heredia so good.

Last night's meal was the other chocolate cookie layer.  It's the 2001 that stands out in my mind as something so wondrously more broad in scope, depth, length and satisfaction.  So pretty, so evocative.

2002 was an extremely difficult vintage in Rioja with bombardments of frost early in the growing season and a rainy June.  Bosconia was spared much of the damage but yields were down significantly across the board, according to their website.

The result, as per usual with Heredia, is a wine that's all Heredia, hitting all the typical, deliciously joyous notes, even if it's not jumping out of the glass and sailing on forever.

But what it brought to the star of the night, the food, was more than we thought.

#221 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Our last post, Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with the 2003 Hirtzberger Axpoint Grüner Veltliner, was the highlight of our grub and drink week but with a week off work for the annual September restaurant vacation, food and wine together at dinner every night nicely complimented my pokey, meandering, highly unproductive hiatus from asking, "Would you like another Coke?"

Some value plays in this week's TWIB Notes.  Friendly French on three occasions, one fine and good enough German offering and a deliciously surprising back-and-forth with two off-region tempranillos, with all the wines under $20.

#220 - Bill Kim Chicken, Soba & White Asparagus With An '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint

We've had a nice survey of quality grüner veltliners over the past two years, thanks mostly to the suggestions from our favorite wine person at Wine Discount Center.

Last night's offering, a 2003 single vineyard released at $45 and now sold for $20 due to the perceived lack of acidity needed for aging in the initial reviews right out of the shoot, is the best one both of us have ever had.

While the acidity certainly didn't define the wine, it tasted like the subdued level of acid most likely experienced right away, in 2004 or 2005, was arrested, staying in the realm of low-ish but nonetheless utterly performing its due diligence, lifting everything else, rounding out the edges, turning the wine into a three-dimensional delight as if it was merely a couple of years old instead of eight.

The big reviewers and their short drinking windows for Austrian wines continue to give us the best wine values when they're halved in price one year after Wine Spectator or Wine Advocate says they're done.

It's one example of how the domination of the market by the big-boy reviewers actually benefit wine drinkers.  Cheap goodness all around.  Of the 25 or so we've bought at a severe discount from the release price over the last three years, maybe two or three weren't Good Stuff.

#219 - Skirt Steak, Mushrooms, Spinach & Vanilla Mash With '00 Clos l'Oratoire

It's tough to have the 2003 Clos Fourtet work as a Right Bank Bordeaux benchmark for us.

When we drank a 375ml of that Clos Fourtet in 2006, it was all dark, dirty, sneaky and haunting.  I thought I had experienced a wine epiphany.  "I think I love Right Bank Bordeaux!"

In our experience since then, they've been finicky in our world.

No exception last night.  We cracked this 2000 Clos l'Oratoire about an hour before drinking to see where it was, found it muted and tight, decanted for an hour but still barely got a crowbar in the door jamb.  After two hours, with much of the food consumed, the wine started to hit its stride with the acid coming to the fore, bringing everything into balance but even that window seemed exceedingly small.

As I said.  Finicky.

When it did hit its stride with small touches of ash, tar, blackberry and lead framed well, both of us still thought, "Nothing special here."

But the French-type feast was very much wanted.

#218 - Blackbird

We saw the beginnings of a chef transition back in December at Blackbird and it was right on script for a place of the quality of the restaurant.

David Posey, Mike Sheerin's sous chef for I believe a couple of years (and an Alinea/Trio vet), had just taken the reins.  The impression of a definitive change in the preparation and flavor came in the small details then.

The transition was gradual - at least through one seasonal menu, we only visit Blackbird a couple of times a year - with echoes of an overarching Sheerin molecular style still present but it tasted more back to basics in the best way possible, like it was preparing for an exploration into a broader, more elemental scope down the road.

#217 - Szechuan Tuna, Beets & Pea Shoots With '06 Ponzi Pinot Noir

The last time we had the 2006 Ponzi estate bottling of pinot noir in April, I remember starting to wonder how long it had left.

The acid that typically and uniquely surrounds and penetrates any year of this Ponzi offering had previously showed signs of fading in this vintage.

Last night's experience was the opposite.  The acid seems to have simply transitioned into a different phase as opposed to showing a linear regression to death.  This acid was alive, jumpy and dominating in a way that we sorta loved.

The experience still stayed more in the world of seeing where the wine had evolved to instead of coming off delicious, fresh and balanced but in the realm of understanding why acid is so important to wine and enjoying it for where it currently sat in its life, good drink I say.

Food:  Szechuan Tuna with beets and pea shoot salad

#216 - San Francisco

Our third trip to the Bay Area in the last four years produced a very nice handful of highlights, a stupefyingly awful lowlight, a comfortable sense of familiarity, tons of interactions with ridiculously friendly, calm people and a relaxing feeling of escape, which was sorely needed.

So...success.  We liked it muchly.

Some impressions:  Torta Frontera by Rick Bayless in O'Hare is the best airport eats we've ever had (and we successfully avoided Bounty Hunter in Napa and Anchor Steam Brewery in SFO.  A first.).  We won't be flying or visiting wine country in August again.  La Quinta, you're always nice and cheap.  Dodge Charger...keep it.  2011 San Francisco summer weather feels like reading the more depressing moments of Kurt Vonnegut (which isn't altogether bad, just foggy-gloomy).  Spanish Table (and the wonderful Joe) was like a candyland for us, reminding us once again that a place deeply entrenched in Spanish-Spanish is desperately needed in Chicago.  Mrs. Ney continued her string of being selected for 'extra screening.'  She's now been tested for a full-body CT scan, a shoe bomb, a liquid/gel bomb, a boob- and/or crotch-bomb (aggressively) and now explosives residue while her companion with the stoic, slightly snarly expression sails right through.  We never expected a veggie-centric lunch could have been so transcendent and a formerly favorite restaurant visited a few hours later would have been such an abomination, tasting like it came from the 'International' section at Denny's.  But easy-peasy and a calming getaway.

This trip:  Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Zuni Café in SF, C Casa Taqueria in Napa, Ubuntu in Napa and Ad Hoc in Yountville.

#215 - Borlotti Bean & Blue Cheese Fregola Risotto With 2003 Hobbs Gregor Shiraz

Grab Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman, we're jumpin' into the WABAC machine.

Last October, we had a top-three meal of 2010 consisting of lamb, fregola risotto and carrot purée with this wine and ruminated about not even needing the lamb.  It did little with the wine while the superlative stuff on the plate was the blue cheese fregola and what it did with the Hobbs Gregor.

Last night, we omitted the lamb, replaced it with borlotti beans and were all the better for it, resulting in a meal that was all of the "Yes!" and none of the "meh."

It was a whittling down, a honing in on what absolutely shined with one of our favorite wines, taking that relatively narrow flavor explosion from a side dish and expanding it out into a meal not driven by a protein but introducing elements that mimic what's good about a protein, like depth and char and meaty qualities.

And that's what happened.  We not only didn't miss the meat, we didn't want the meat because everything we want in meat was there in meatless form.

It became a meal that proves the notion that big-boy, burly and deep shiraz doesn't always need meat to tame it.  There are a ton of different avenues to pursue that makes for stupid-good stuff.

"After all, Sherman.  Isn't it important in life to avoid a Hobbesian choice?"

"Oh, Mr. Peabody."

Food:  Borlotti bean & blue cheese fregola risotto with arugula salad

#214 - Not Thomas Keller Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '07 Fichet Meursault

We're torn.

On the one hand, Thomas Keller chicken is chicken on crack with stupid-good crispy skin, a pool of juice that could be sold on the street and turn a tidy profit and leg and thigh meat that turns so dark and succulent.

On the other hand, due to the high cooking temperature and longer time in the oven, keeping the breast meat moist (huh-huh - I enjoy lame running gags) has been a delicate balancing act, usually just missing the mark.

So along came the Cook's Illustrated version of simple roasted chicken in this month's issue, cutting the cooking time in half while turning the oven off halfway through to allow the bird to continue cooking but at a gradual and incrementally lower temperature.  Seemed right and proper to keep the breast meat juicy.

So we gave it a go.

#213 - Beet Gazpacho, Moroccan-y Lamb Over Rice & Carrot Salad With an '07 Beaume-de-Venise

I think I can declare the White Sox dead after last night's monkey-hump, which means they'll go on a run.  That's how my declarations usually go.

In other news, check out this week's New Yorker story on the details of the raid on the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.  Great read.

Back to the grub and juice.  And back to the recipes of Jamie Oliver along with another 2007 Rhône.

This bottle fell in the same vein as the Domaine Grand Veneur Clos de Sixte from Tuesday, also showing a surprisingly light touch driven by earth and herbs with the fruit supporting the lead actors.

For a hugely ripe vintage that the big critics said was a classic and the smaller (read: probably better) ones calling it overblown and overripe, we've had six or seven on the lower end of cost spectrum that have mostly been quite graceful, restrained and not at all overripe.

While the wine was fine stuff, the food led the way here.

Food:  Beet gazpacho, Moroccan-y lamb over rice and Indian carrot salad

#212 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New feature here at FWW.

It's TWIB notes, a roundup of food and wine from weeknight meals, BYOs, lunches, leftovers and anything else that might have happened that involved food with wine.  Just hum the theme to This Week In Baseball while reading and it becomes interactive.

Let's get right to it.

Sunday Dinner:  Leftover Daniel Boulud Fennel Balls With a 2007 Rhône tasting

Boulud fennel risotto balls leftover from June, when they exploded to great effect with a cheap 2009 Schild Estate GMS.

Mrs. Ney made 50 balls then, we ate 18 in June, another 18 Sunday and brought some to co-workers to sample...and there's STILL MORE!

Original recipe here. Switched up the pepper in the coulis the first time, using sweet picanté peppadew and it was one of many things we adored about that meal.  Back to the original recipe this time, using piquillo peppers and blending in some leftover carrot purée.  Not as good but still tasty.  The fennel balls as well suffered from not being freshy-fresh but it turned into gussied-up Fancy Frozen Food Sunday in delicious ways.  Pomegranate seeds drizzled over the entire plate again with an arugula salad with lemon thyme to finish.

#211 - Rosemary Lamb & Potato-Kale Cake With A 2000 Amarone

Trying to till through sparse or vague reviews for a wine bought at a bargain and figuring out how to drink it can be a difficult plough.

We got this 2000 Amarone at a steep discount, down to $35 from $60, which was probably flag #1.

A mid-level producer from a very fine vintage in Amarone, recommendations on wines from top-end producers in Amarone typically want people to wait ten, sometimes twenty years before drinking them and most don't even release them until five years after the vintage.  Here's one that should be forging ahead quite nicely yet...nearly 50% off.

Then there was the Wine Spectator review:

90  Intense, with currants, herbs and a tinge of iodine. Full-bodied and smooth, with concentrated fruit and mineral flavors. Very fine tannins that firm up a bit on the finish. Bitter chocolate aftertaste. Needs time. Best after 2006. 950 cases made. –JS

Looking back after drinking it, some more flags.  The review was done upon release, in 2005, yet we have a "needs time" followed by a "best after 2006."  A short gap followed by an absence of a real drinking window and pretty generic descriptors used for an Amarone translates to a wine that is "fiiiinnnne" and good enough or typical but nothing exciting.

That's what we got as well, along with typically good lamb, a shockingly delicious potato-kale cake and an "Oregonzola" cheese from Rogue Creamery to pair with the Amarone that blew us away.

But shiraz or syrah was the play here.

#210 - Shrimp On Fire, Plantains & Brussels Sprouts Slaw With '06 Pichler Riesling

Ever have a meal that teetered on the line of too spicy hot to eat but effectively held on the line enough to enjoy it for its mouth-scalding fiery goodness?

That was Shrimp On Fire, not the name of the actual recipe, just what resulted from substituting the presumed heat equivalent of six arbol chilies with about twenty old, presumably flavor-faded, piri piri peppers.

Oops!

It reminded me of the Modern Family episode where Cameron orders the Diablo at a Mexican restaurant.  We had the fiery shrimp sweats with eyes watering and the inside of our mouths screaming bloody murder.

In ways, we liked it for its heat and the underlying peanut in the sauce was delicious.

No wine was going to save this pairing, unfortunately.  We needed booze in the form of margaritas or something to counter the heat, which was too bad because the Pichler was all sorts of interesting, even elegant.

Food:  Shrimp on fire, plantains and Brussels sprouts slaw

#209 - Orecchiette & Lentils With 2010 De Falco Falanghina

Shorter one day as yesterday's prodigious length burned up any useful part of my brain.

Last night's meal wasn't better than bison flank, risotto and Duorum but if you caught us in the right mood, or the bison meal caught us in a crabby one and this one in a friendly, "the world's so nice!" one, orecchiette and lentils with falanghina might have won.

In short, it was close, and closer than we expected.

Probably because it's a Lidia Bastianich recipe that fills you up while leaving you feeling so, so clean.  She does that.

And it was meatless...except for a bit of ham dust.

Food:  Orecchiette and lentils

A modification (s) from Lidia's recipe, substituting orecchiette for rigatoni.  I got a thing with how the orecchiette's little cups catch more sauce.  Less messy and you get more of the good stuff.

#208 - Bison Flank Steak, Tapenade & Risotto With '07 Duorum Reserva

One seemingly innocent element in many of the best pairings over the history of this here blog has served as the literal and figurative starchy-oozy gooey glue to what made them great.

We like various grains risotto'ed up.

Jus' sum'in 'bout it.  Something about its ability to round out edges in the rest of the food and the wine, round out the pairing, enhance spicing, perk up fruit, help along secondary flavors and bring a rational, sane and mature flavor to a meal.

Stupid Italians.  They got yet another thing right.

Whether it's a saffron risotto with arborio, blue cheese fregola, pistachio fregola, pearl municion, fennel arancini, English pea risotto, duck risotto or various other takes on these and other styles, risotto has been the happy-slappy glue to many a great meal for us over two-plus bloggy years and more.

Last night was no different.  Outstanding food here that harkened back to a former food place for us and served with a wine that was all Portugal.

Food:  Bison flank steak with almond/olive tapenade and Israeli couscous/São Jorge risotto

#207 - Great Lunch With Greek Sparkling & Not So Great Dinner

New digs here at Food With Wine.

That stretched picture up above?  That's Quinta Do Vallado in the Douro Valley, a place that made us feel the most relaxed we'd been in years.  Best views and the best pool ever.

Say hello to Cristina and Francisco for us if you ever go.  They're nice people.

Up was down and black was white Monday in the food and wine department.  We had a tossed together lunch using leftovers that was just the tops while a more thoughtful dinner in terms of recipe and what we thought should have been delicious fall oh-so flat.

Dinner made Mrs. Ney angry but lunch saved the day simply by having one food and wine match that we'll be having again and most likely often.

Lunch:  Lidia Bastianich veggie salad with Greek feta, honey and pink peppercorns

Watching Mrs. Bastianich whip up a leftover refrigerator veggie salad on the Martha Stewart Show (didn't turn the channel to it, I left it on the Hallmark Channel after watching Cheers the night before - I feel I need to say that) both of us thought, "I'd eat that," so we did.

#206 - Basque Wednesday With Two Wines

As we begin to cook our way through the Pintxos cookbook, the impulse to continue to try more recipes reveals itself in a similar fashion to our thoughts of the food as we eat it. It's a feeling of 'I want to continue to do this' in its most basic form.

There's a simplicity and honesty to the food, tasting like its origins.  If eaten blind, you could nail it as an amalgam of Spanish and touches of southern French. It stays clean, leads with spicing and offers flavors familiar with a hint of newness and surprise.

At times we've wanted a bit more depth and heartiness from a couple of the dishes but the recipes have never disappointed in their freshness and unique flavor.  It's a winner, giving something more than simply a diversion in food style or testing of something different.

Here's three more from the book.

Lunch:  Gigante bean salad with white anchovies and cold melon shooters with serrano ham chips

#205 - Skirt Steak & Juanita's Saffron Potatoes With '02 Atauta Llanos del Almendro

The dog's cancer-free so we cracked the good stuff.

And this certainly was the Good. Stuff.

In fact, right out of the bottle and after two hours in the decanter, we thought it might have the potential to be more enjoyable than the 2000 Pingus from three months ago.

Its progress towards that level of goodness was halted over the course of the night, never reaching that amount of depth and seduction but if you named ten elements that a Ribera wine can possess that would make it an exceptional wine, this one certainly had eight of them.  And every one of those eight elements were delicious.

In other words, it was Ribera all the way while offering such a unusual and idiosyncratic voice.

#204 - Two Meals As Our Dog Heals

Between thunderstorms, four days of fireworks and a biopsy on her head, our dog has been sent through the ringer in the past week.  She's been a trooper.  A lot of tub time but she's been a trooper.

I've talked about our love for many cookbooks over the last two years with The New Spanish Table and The New Portuguese Table certainly near the top.  A new one has entered the fold, Pintxos, Small Plates In The Basque Tradition, from the chef-owner of Piperade and Bocadillos in San Francisco.

We had a delicious, distinctive and memorable meal at Piperade three years ago.

His recipe collection here seems to reflect that same experience.  We've just started to delve into the bowels and they're plenty to like, plenty to crave and plenty to understand as the recipes are meticulously written and straight-forward.  I can say 'we' because I actually participated in the cooking (!) and had a great time.

Meal #1 - Bill Kim-marinated chicken thighs, soba noodles and fava beans

A Bill Kim spicy Thai marinade with basil and cilantro for chicken thighs from July's edition of Food & Wine.  Wonderful, deep dark flavors in the marinade that nonetheless came off lifted and bright throughout.  Fish sauce integrated well enough to offer a mysterious depth to the chicken while letting all the other flavors show up individually in a great way.  Winner marinade here.  Thighs cooked under a brick à la Mark Bittman.

#203 - Tuna Niçoise With A 2010 Les Pallières Rosé

Tuna Niçoise as a meal presents something akin to alchemy.

Given 15 different elements in their mostly unadulterated forms on a plate, the joy comes in combining two or three or four or more of the elements to see what new flavor presents itself.

The result is a cavalcade of distinct flavors created entirely by you, in the order you like, wonderfully beholden to the micro-craving you have in the second before taking a bite and culminating in one of the most clean, refreshing and wanted feelings of satisfaction right after putting the napkin down for the final time.

It's been upgraded from a top-fiver to one of the top-three meals in my world.

With rosé, it might be perfect because as a pairing, it's a function that you can manipulate and correct as you eat, finding the best collections to keep the wine right where you want it if you starts to gradually run off the rails.  Too much onion in that bite with tomatoes, green beans and a bit of tuna?  Use less in the next bite and suddenly the food-wine combo becomes something so much more.

And with rosé, you get a wine straddling both wine worlds: refreshing and crisp like a white with the guts and depth of a red.  A good one is a chameleon adaptable to multiple environments.  Tuna Niçoise offers a bevy of different food environments and the Les Pallières is certainly a good one.

#202 - Turkish Beany Surprise, Explorateur & Asparagus Salad With An '07 Cab Franc

We nearly went to Cleveland yesterday for the annual Lola mini-vacation.

After some cocktails and a bit of wine Monday, it sounded like the best idea ever.  Then, fifteen minutes later, not so much.

So a 'vacation' downtown for the day, something we haven't done in years, substituted and probably exceeded a trip to the Cleve, especially given the ten hours in the car that would have been required.

Xoco for lunch (delicious), Sable Bar + Kitchen for cocktails right after (really delicious) and an early dinner at Purple Pig (Crap! That was good!) made for a pretty great getaway during one of the most gorgeous strings of weather days in Chicago in years.

On Purple Pig, a vintage 2005 Juvé y Camps Reserva de la Familia Cava made for a largely good pairing with the food but alone, so wonderfully funky, it made our minds dance with visions of what we could whip up at home that would slide right into the spritely yet deep funk this one offers.  Great stuff here.  Entirely reasonable $52 at the restaurant and $15-17 on the webbywebs.

Monday's meal that led to the downtown vacation also had some revelations.  One, Turkish Beany Surprise made two days before for an impromptu Meatless Monday turned out to be an awesome idea.  Mrs. Ney was leery of such things, or at least bored by the idea of it.  Two, (whisper) I think I like cabernet franc.  Like...a lot.  Three, eat your cheese two months past the expiration date every time.  It's what Jesus wants.

#201 - Vegetarian Mexican Stew With '06 Seghesio Old Vine Zinfandel

For a lazy day that left us indifferent to pretty much anything related to food or wine, a nice little meal evolved out of it:

Food that was quick and easy, meatless and cheap with a wine that had gotten to the point of burning our retinas with its ubiquitous yet blah-inducing nature every time we looked at the shelf for a wine to drink for dinner.

Zinfandel really isn't our bag.  Has a place but it's always been a very specific place and that's been briskety-type meals, the last time in December eating a briskety asado negro, mashed plantains, jalapeño cheddar biscuits and sautéed spinach with an '07 Seghesio zinfandel estate bottling.

Over the last three years, in the Zinfandel world, our love has been given mostly to the Saldo line of the Orin Swift brand, having the 2008 with beef brisket and cornbread and very much liking what it brought to the table.

And the first time I had the Seghesio basic Sonoma bottling about three years ago, it was, for me, the answer to the question, "What's a cheap bottle of wine that will give me an idea what 'balance' in wine means?"  Fantastic stuff when very young.

The Old Vine Sonoma last night, after it got out of its initial Robitussin phase, turned into something more welcome but never jettisoned itself out of the world of 'typical.'

#200 - Revisiting The Very First Pairing

It's fun with numbers!

Today, for the 200th post, we revisit the very first pairing we ever did for this blog, Wine Can Chicken with 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinriegl, which started out the blog with a bang and served us much better than post #2, Church Cookbook Lasagna with 2008 Castle Rock Pinot Noir.  My bowels are probably still scraping out the nastiness of that concoction.

We soon rebounded from that calamity though with pairing post #5, Wine Can Chicken and saffron risotto with 1996 Heredia Gravonia that saddled right up to the food in great Spanish ways.

Thomas Keller Chicken quickly usurped Wine Can Chicken as the chicken standard with pairing post #83, our first foray into seriously considering chardonnay as a drinkable grape and something we might actually want.  But WCC found itself left in the dust, so much so that Mrs. Ney struggled today to find her WCC mojo in the kitchen, something that once upon a time came to her quite naturally.

Since this is #200, let's look back at other number milestones in 25-post increments that starts out with a boatload of more chicken (and risotto):

#199 - Monday Grub To Wash The Workweek Away

Tough workweek for both of us with Mrs. Ney's a bit tougher than mine.

But there's something about a great Monday - which is our Friday - lunch that goes a long way in wiping out all the residual psychological trauma that comes with the end of a rough week of work.

It allows for a clean break, clap-clap, in a way most welcome and needed on certain weeks and this was certainly one.

We just wanted sparkling wine and to use up the Champagne cheese in the fridge that was three weeks past its expiration.  What we got was a level of deliciousness and joy that hasn't been seen in weeks for Monday lunch.

So simple, so unadulterated, yet oh so freaky good.

Food:  Lincet Chaource Champagne cheese, baguette, mâche salad and a peach

Whole Foods Chaource cheese from Champagne, three weeks past expiration, as I so recently said.  Semi-semi-soft, cow's milk cheese using a similar recipe to that of brie.  Probably much more creamy and soft when young, but the length of time in the fridge made for a firmer texture and concentration of flavors, most likely.

#198 - Daniel Boulud Fennel Balls And Peppadew Purée With '09 Schild GMS

The 2009 Schild Estate GMS came to the rescue in February after a bottle of cheap Italian wine turned out to be corked.

Same thing happened last night when a 2006 Domaine de Ferrand Châteauneuf-du-Pape turned out to be dreadfully dull, showing all liquid figs and blood with not nearly enough acid we were craving at the time and was needed with the food.

Back in February, we drank the Schild Estate GMS with pork, pancetta and prunes.  Delicious food that we enjoyed but the pairing and the surprising cheapness for such big delivery in the wine was the talk of the night.

Last night was different.  We ate food so good it made me want to swear...loudly.  The Schild this time simply reminded us how versatile it is with food and how we really should be buying a case or two very soon.  It's that food-friendly and that good.

But not as good as Daniel Boulud modified fennel balls.

These are just silly great.

Food:  Daniel Boulud fennel balls with a peppadew pepper purée, candied pancetta and pomegranate seeds with an arugula salad

Basically arancini, Boulud Frenches them up and adds Spanish touches, like something that would be served on the border of Tarragona and Rousillon.

#197 - Chicken Piccata, Roasted Potatoes & Arugula With '09 Coenobium Lazio Bianco

Tasted like feet.

On a recent trip to Wine Discount Center, Mrs. Ney asked for a funky white wine recommendation and that's what she got - this wine that's the definition of a funky white with an interesting story behind it.

Organically grown by sisters of the Cistercian order, the juice of the grapes see prolonged contact with the skins and isn't fined or filtered, resulting in an old school wine from an old school Benedictine group of sisters housed about 60 km north of Rome in Lazio.

The $27 price tag and how it showed last night wouldn't make us run out to get more and, not being Catholic, I can't fudge the rules and claim it as part of my tithe, but in the deliciously oxidized white wine world, it had its moments.

Food:  Chicken piccata, roasted potatoes and arugula

A longtime weeknight meal heavily in the rotation that became supplanted by Sandwich Day a few years ago, it was nice to return to the simplicity and tasty lemon-caper-chicken juice goodness that is chicken piccata.  Homey stuff.

Chicken stock reduced a touch longer than normal, offering a touch more of a salty angle but never distracted while bringing a more concentration to the sauce, making for a more chicken essence.  The standard chicken piccata recipe:  chicken breasts dredged in flour and fried up, reduction of chicken stock, unsalted butter, olive oil, capers, lemon peels and parsley cooked and reduced in the chicken breast pan with the leftover fried bits.

#196 - Harissa Hanger, Spicy Carrot Purée & Sherry Onions With '08 Mas Carlot

Good things are good.

Last night's dinner was good, great actually.

Bridesmaids is not so much good, well, sorta almost good, marginally almost funny, not the worst way to spend a 97 degree day.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams is quite good and should probably be seen in 3-D, just make sure to go in with knowledge of Werner Herzog's penchant for meandering through the material in a way that can only be seen through his eyes.  Do that and you'll love it.  And the postscript absolutely has a place.

I cannot recommend Those Guys Have All the Fun: Inside the World of ESPN, an 800 page manufactured drama of the most inconsequential inconsequentialness.  If you're interested in the behind-the-scenes fights over how the ESPYs made it to air, then this is for you.  For me, it's like listening to other people's stories about their children.  Keep it.  The Pale King, DFW's unfinished novel, was bought for summer reading but instead I chose to finish this pile of poo.  And it's 800 pages!  Did I mention that?

But back to the good.

Ever eaten high quality soil?  We have, last night, on the plate and in the glass and it was delicious.

#195 - Moroccan-Inflected Tuna & Beets With NV Larmandier-Bernier Rosé de Saignée

The bloom is a bit off the rosé de saignée (I make jokes) with one of our favorite wines in the last year and a top-five pairing ever.

When we first had the non-vintage Larmandier-Bernier Rosé de Saignée on Christmas Eve with duck, farro and Brussels sprouts, it was pairing perfection.

Last night wasn't pairing perfection in the least, but it was gosh darn good stuff with some surprises.

We first had a version of this "Best Tuna Ever" back in January with Ponzi Willamette and Ken Wright Shea.  Oddly, the Larmandier-Bernier this time, instead of exploding with a huge blood orange core - which was a fruit we incorporated into the tuna prep last time and served with Ponzi but not this time - it came off more rose petaly, leafy and more quiet, tasting more like a Ponzi Willamette instead of a Champagne.

Get that?  I didn't.

It does feel, though, like we got into the nitty-gritty of how this tuna recipe performs more broadly with pinot noir and pinot noir-based wine while also informing me about how the familiarity of flavors can influence how a meal feels at the time and how it's going to resonate.

#194 - Lavender Lamb And Pistachio Fregola With A 2000 Heredia Bosconia

It's interesting to know a winery well enough to be able to taste it and have a ballpark idea of how old it is, how the vintage was and how long a particular bottle has to go.

I don't have the wine tasting ability to be able to do such things yet with just any wine.

But it seems that this is how said ability starts: with an fairly intimate understanding of one winery, experience with tons of vintages over a course of years and the knowledge of how the winery's style and wine has shown at various stages in good, bad and mediocre years.

I'm terrible at blind tastings when it comes to nailing down the vitals. Mrs. Ney's tongue is infinitely better than mine at such things.  But I would probably know if a Quinta do Vale Meão was a 2003 or 2007 (great years) contrasted with any of the years in between.  I'd feel fairly competent in the early aughts of Clos Fourtet.  I think I could nail a Ponzi in a lineup of young Oregon pinots.

But last night, not knowing the finer vintage details before drinking, I don't think I've ever come across a wine that was so obvious in my head to be a Heredia Bosconia about 10-15 years old and from a vintage that wasn't the best.

Having said all that - and good for you, Christo, here's your popsicle - we still don't know why people get off on such things so thoroughly.  Especially when good red wine is infinitely better with the right food.

Food:  Lavender lamb, piquillo marmalade, pistachio fregola and asparagus

Mario Batali's lavender/rosemary lamb recipe from Food & Wine, made during the filming of that shockingly dull Spain - On The Road Again PBS series.  You know, the one where Gwyneth Paltrow wouldn't eat pork...in Spain...for a TV show about eating food in Spain.  But the world now knows she speaks Spanish quite well and that's the most important thing, really.  We felt terrible for Mr. Batali.  He knows and loves Spanish food but had nothing to work with.  I digress.

#193 - Memorial Day Hodgepodge

We stayed in for the holiday due to the 90-degree heat.

We don't enjoy hot.  If northern California didn't have earthquakes, we'd probably be living there.  Since it does, we'll just visit.  Next trip in three months.

But that's not to say we don't enjoy a hot day with a dip in the pool followed by lounging around on the patio afterwards with a bottle of wine.  We thought we could take or leave that before experiencing such a glorious 'that' at Quinta do Vallado winery in the Douro Valley last September.

While basking in the afterglow of a pool dip in 90-degree heat there, we drank a bottle of white from the winery.  I wanted to get all nostalgic and recreate that on the first hot day in Chicago with the same wine.  Yesterday was that hot day.

So we did.

Lunch:  Tomato salad, mozzzarella di bufala and baguette


Tomato salad made with tomatoes, red onion, garlic, fresno and jalapeño peppers, basil, oregano, white balsamic vinegar and extra virgin olive oil.  Mediterranean and all get-out and delicious stuff.

A ball of sliced mozzarella di bufala drizzled with extra virgin olive oil and topped with a handful of fresh basil leaves.  Baguette to mix and match.

Silly good lunch that tasted like a lunch that needs to be eaten once a week.  It's the very core of What We Want.

#192 - Ropa Vieja-ish Flank Steak & Yuca Fries With '06 Mas De Maha

With this, our last bottle of the 2006 Villa Creek Mas De Maha has been drunk.

Our love was quick and firm with this wine, becoming infinitely more firm when we found out how perfect it went with Cuban and Cuban-inspired food.

That's been a pairing that sits in the top-five in our food and wine world, anything Cubany with Mas De Maha and you got yourself a party in your mouth and everyone's invited.

Last night was the best yet.  The wine found itself a second life about a year ago, turning from a Tempranillo-dominated show with the Grenache and Mourvèdre serving as a great supporting cast to something more light and subtle with all sorts of raspberry notes in every form possible exploding everywhere.

A price drop on this wine about a year and a half ago from $31 to $22, probably caused by the Parker review that limited its drinking window to 4-5 years out from bottling, left me leery that it would last if I jumped in and bought a case.

That's too bad because it's sailing along in its second life quite well right now.

And again, with Cuban-ish food, we had a pairing last night that touched the realm of perfect.

Food:  Roja vieja-ish flank steak and yuca fries with pan sauce mayo

Flank steak marinated à la "Flank Steak With Garlic, Oregano, Orange and Cumin", courtesy of the New York Times.

#191 - TK Chicken And Two Eastern French Cheeses With An '02 Paul Pernot Folatières

I like interesting things.  Who doesn't like interesting things?

Interesting things drive curiosity and fuel further forays in the food and wine field.

But interesting is a broad word and sometimes interesting is too much work when all you want is to eat and drink two elements that go together without much effort.

If I wanted to ponder this wine, think about it, pour over its nuances and layers, then great, there's plenty here to think about.

We just wanted a well-crafted white Burgundy that would go with a great chicken while playing well with cheeses from the same general region.

This wasn't that.

Food:  TK chicken, Epoisses and Delice du Jura cheeses, baguette and mâche salad

Better than solid Thomas Keller chicken slathered in white pepper and lemon thyme, juicy and delicious, which is too bad because it felt a touch wasted on the experimentation going on everywhere else.