#281 - Piri-Piri Chicken, Couscous & Pineapple With '10 Berger Grüner Veltliner

Holy crap!

From a technical pairing standpoint, this was just awful. Truly terrible stuff. This was Ishtar. This was Battlefield Earth. This was even bad inside of bad, like "Take me to the teleportation platform!" inside Battlefield Earth.

We planned a Portuguese white, 2009 Van Zellers Branco ($18 - Spanish Table), to drink with this No Reservations Mozambique episode-inspired piri-piri chicken but...corked. No backup chilled. The 2010 Berger Grüner Veltliner, a common fridge wine in this house, was the only option. And what an option it was!

Food was piri-piri chicken thighs (page 118, The New Portuguese Table) cooked under a brick. Tasted like fancy buffalo wings in a good way. Whole wheat Israeli couscous cooked in chicken stock with crushed coriander and fennel seeds; sliced green onions mixed in post-cooking. Great cheap option that can be gussied up and was. Overripe pineapple. Lemon thyme dumped over everything. Arugula salad with evoo and white balsamic vinegar to finish. Tasted like roadside café food thrust upon you when your car breaks down in the middle of Louisiana nowhere and something about it leaves a big, happy impression on you.

The wine pairing was another story. Just shocking how bad it was. So bad that any critical tongue was put in our back pocket and we just sat back and took it in, which made for an oddly happy dinner. With the food, the 2010 Berger Grüner Veltliner ($13 - WDC), usually a delicious little mid-afternoon guzzler, tasted like zucchini juice, bean-soaking water and, at times, milk just about to turn had a baby. Hilarious how bad it was with the piri-piri (and we knew it would be). Made nice efforts with the couscous, even good at times, but once the piri-piri hit our tongues, it was all downhill from there. But like watching Battlefield Earth, there wasn't one moment I was going to get up and leave (yep. Saw it in the theatre in anticipation of such howlingly terrible stuff). It was so bad it was almost good.  Pairing Score: 60  

#280 - Chimichurri-Marinated Flank Steak & Potatoes With '06 Mollydooker Carnival Of Love

Got rid of it!

And thank God! Both of us were sick of looking at it and both of us were sick of having it come up in the discussion when figuring out pairings over the last few years.

I mean the wine, of course.

97 points Wine Advocate, #8 on the Wine Spectator Top 100 of 2007 (the 2007 checked in at #9) so...critical darling and most likely the reason we bought. That and being available at Sam's. We loved Australian wine at the time. Still do. But if this sort of wine came up on some list now and we saw it out in the world, there would probably be more of a pause and pass.

We're learning.

Food: Chimichurri-marinated flank steak, salt-crusted potatoes, balsamic-roasted pearl onions and arugula salad

#279 - Shrimp Lunch With '10 Strub Riesling & Greek Dinner With '09 Villa Creek Avenger

Hey, it was thigh-soaking hot last Memorial Day as well.

And we went Greek then, too!

And we had Villa Creek wine just a few days before last May Remembrance with ropa vieja, a meal we were just talking about last night!

This is eerie. Moon cycles or something.

Our pairings were better this May holiday than last, with a quality bargain riesling and a surprisingly savory Villa Creek number that I think shows the vintage and the work Villa Creek put in to create something rather delicious.

Lunch:  Leek-saffron shrimp and bread for juice dipping with 2010 Strub Niersteiner Brückchen Riesling Kabinett ($18 - WDC)

#278 - Yogurt/Saffron-Marinated Top Sirloin & Potatoes With '04 Resalte de Peñafiel De Restia Crianza

A Selbach-Oster dinner at Yusho on Tuesday left me contemplating buying another cellar.  Mr. Johannes made the night something to remember. Great guy.

Home classic revisited yesterday after a moderately long absence.

The 'home classic'-ness came from a marinade of saffron, onions, yogurt, ginger, lemon juice and olive oil.

Stupid great with bison and '07 Duorum Reserva.

So good with flank steak and duck fat potatoes that it trumped Portuguese buggy-bear love, the '04 Quinta do Vale Meão.

With the ubiquitous pan-Mediterranean flavors in the marinade, your wine direction is pretty open, but we've always loved the Spanish-Portuguese connection, something with a smoky, mineral undertone.

Ribera fits like a glove.

Food: Yogurt/saffron-marinated top sirloin, rosemary-garlic potatoes and arugula salad

#277 - Michael Symon Chicken, Salsa Verde & Fava-Corn-Avocado Salad With '08 Viñátigo Verdello

We spent four days in Portland/Willamette Valley last week.

Here are some highlights:

• No sales tax! 
• The Portland airport smells like wet dog. 
• Firehouse Restaurant has good food that needs more depth but a great wine list. 
• The new Nissan Sentra has fantastic get-up-and-go but it's a little too slopey. 
• No sales tax! 
• Owen Roe winery is a warehouse with a road sign and gravel road leading to it that makes you think you might be bound, gagged and thrown in the basement. But by golly! Great private tasting! 
• Nick's Italian Café in McMinnville pumps out delicious, old-school vittles with a huge nod to the new and a great, cheap, Oregon-focused wine list picked to match the food. 
• Expected the Willamette Valley to be more...bucolic.
• The beautiful grounds at Ponzi match their beautiful wines. 
• At Voodoo Donut, simple is better.
• Stumptown Cold Brew gets us closer in finding the best bottled coffee 
• I thought I'd found the Holy Grail of Viet/Thai food while eating at Pok Pok but it didn't resonate as much as I thought it would (and then it did. I really did). 
• No sales tax! 
• No self-service gas stations, which was a touch odd. 
• Potato Champion's worth it for the curry ketchup and anchovy-tarragon mayo alone. 
• Olympic Provisions has a top-notch ham sandwich and bratwurst. 
• Flagship Powell's Books made me miss bookstores. 
• Andina's Peruvian grub hit a big place in both of us. 
• No sales tax! 
• Four days of sun and mid-70s...in Portland, continuing our vacation streak of great weather (knock-knock).  

Maybe should have went skydiving. Maybe should have seen the coast. But nice little getaway overall. We both thought that if we worked for a corporation and were told we were getting transferred, with the myriad of just terrible possible options, if we were told we were going to Portland...for two years...we'd both say, "Oh...okay...we can do that." It's a nice place with nice people and tons to do.

On the food. We like home food and we like Chicago food just a bit more. In our small sample size, we missed the depth and maybe the surprise.

Speaking of home food, this is why we Like it:

#276 - Rabbit Sausages, Chicken Thigh & Smokey Blue Fregola With '11 Ponzi Pinot Gris + 1

Ponzi-licious.

Ponzi acid, guys. Ponzi. Acid.

It's what they do oh-so well (among other things) and these two meals really showcased that.

Good weekend. Found Ring Day on Monday followed by tuna Niçoise with --> Ponzi Pinot Noir Rosé followed by this meal.

Plus, dog obedience class is over. We got our Wednesday nights back. You should see how much she kinda-sorta-not really remembers it all.

A trip to Oregon wine country for us soon. Drinking Ponzi seemed right and proper....and Ponzi-licious (I'll stop that now).

Food: Rabbit sausages, chicken thigh, blue cheese fregola and baby kale salad with meat juice

#275 - Spanish Hanger, Rosemary Potatoes & Rapini With '96 Contino Gran Reserva

May 7th will henceforth be referred to as Found Ring Day.

I lost my wedding ring cleaning out the neighborhood storm drains Sunday.  Convinced it was lost to the city sewer gods, I nonetheless made a seemingly hopeless effort to find it. As I was looking, an older gentleman on a bicycle, smoking a cigarette, curious as to what I was doing with a rake around a storm drain, asked what was happening. I told him, he was sympathetic, we talked, he mentioned I should look to St. Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, and he peddled away. I found it three minutes later.

I'm not a religious man, but...

So moderately fancy wine to celebrate.

On a side note, this was the replacement ring if said ring wasn't found. That's a freakin' gorgeous ring.

Food:  Hanger steak, rosemary potatoes and rapini

#274 - Weisswurst, Grapes, Tomatoes, Pierogis & Rapini With '09 Ponzi Dolcetto

While not necessarily a meal fit for the first hot and humid day of the year, this sausage, grapes and tomatoes recipe, first eaten as a weeknight meal a few weeks ago and loved every second of it, has easily shoved its elbows into our food rotation.

Its five best qualities:

1. Delicious
2. Easy to make
3. Versatile as all-get out for wine pairings
4. Tasty enough for quick dinner AND sorta fancy dinner
5. Delicious

In fact, it's a meal perfect for showcasing a wine you crave. Reverse it. Modify the recipe. You crave a wine and don't necessarily crave a specific dinner? Modify this one with herbs. Got a Portuguese wine just sitting around and want it? Add a dash of five-spice.  How 'bout a GSM? Sage and pepper it up. Maybe South African syrah blend? Bet a sprinkling of mint and black olives would be interesting. Possibly a Ribera del Duero? Char up the sausage and drizzle in a touch more balsamic.

It's a platform for so much because it possesses wine's origins in the grapes with a tomato acid that doesn't drive the dish.

Mrs. Ney wishes she would have added rosemary to link the Italian variety here but we quickly warmed to the pairing while getting everything the wine offered.

Food:  Weisswurst, grapes & tomatoes with potato pierogis and rapini

#273 - Roasted Chicken, Brillat-Savarin, Bread & Butter With '02 Gimmonet Special Club

Been awhile.

Wine-related things have happened, just little of anything that wowed us.

A Blackbird dinner featuring older-vintage Sanguis wines brought interesting food, if low in acid, and pairings that puzzled us a bit.  Texture perfection has seemingly been the MO at Blackbird over the last few years and they nail it.  It's memorable stuff in that respect.  It just doesn't get under our skin these days like acid perfection does and that, in our experience, takes a backseat at Blackbird.

With wines all a wee touch over 15% alcohol, more grizzly bear elements in the food seemed warranted. A stupid-good sous-vide quail was gobbled up by the Infidels, a bigger syrah-cab-grenache blend.  An amuse of fluke and lardo needed an acid lift from the Acromion, a roussanne-viognier blend, and the wine just didn't offer such a thing.  The Optimist showed better with ahi and beef tongue than our home experience while The Bossman, a personal favorite, fell flat, turning gritty with black bean agnolotti, ricotta, peas, morels and wasabi.

Sanguis is about decadence. Blackbird excels in different food arenas. Odd fit.

But the winery owners are just the tops and they have a customer. Blackbird as well because the experience is always something that feels like visiting friends.

In other news, the sign of a good wine shop comes from a game. If you browse the selection in a given wine shop and someone told you that you could only drink wines from there the rest of your natural-born life, would that upset you? Would you feel like a large gaping hole opened up in your wine world?  Would you palpably feel like something, a big something, was missing? I don't think I'd feel that to any large extent with Vinic in Evanston. Great diversity, great owner, great bargains and an atmosphere you want to spend time just walking around in.  Rare, very rare thing in Chicago. An Evanston alcohol/city combined sales tax approaching 15%, which was a surprise, but worth it.

On to a back-on-the-equine pairing of chicken and fancy Champagne.