#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.