#310 - Walnut-Pomegranate Chicken & Rapini With '01 La Rioja Alta Viña Ardanza Reserva Especial

Three months ago in Rioja, during the best vacation of our lives, a restaurant was recommended to us by someone in the know on one of the nights we didn't have any food plans.

Los 4 Arcos in Briones, particularly for their lamb roasted over wine vines, a tradition quickly becoming a rarity in Rioja, as we were told.

I think everyone has those places they're told about where the possibility of eating THAT becomes almost mythical in their brains. It becomes a bit of an obsession, something that HAS to happen, especially after driving there, up a myriad of zig-zagged, impossibly narrow "streets" to the very peak of the hilltop town only to find out they were closed for their September vacation.

So that lamb, the thought of eating that lamb, morphed into THE lamb, the one that has transformed into the pinnacle of having lamb and we haven't even eaten it yet.

Stupid and silly brain stuff, that. But with tentative plans to go back to Rioja (and Hotel Viura, Arzak and Etxebarri), Los 4 Arcos will hopefully be able to accommodate us because that's lamb that we want to eat, both because of what it is and what it's become in our brains.

I say all this because this meal with this wine jettisoned itself into that superlative Spanish food and wine world we love so much, that place where the meal tastes like something Given. Something that makes you say, "Nah. THIS doesn't exist. It doesn't!" It tastes like an intimate history of a place that we seemingly know but weren't born there, only been to a couple of times and don't even really know the language. It's stuff that feels like a gift.

Just does.

#309: TWIB: A Potpourri of Pairings

We're in slowdown mode here at FWW but let's whip out some food & wine pairings had over the course of this busy holiday week in the tradition of "Boom! Roasted!"

Things we learned during this Thanksgiving blur: Leave Amarone Classico on the shelf. Spend $4 more for the good albariño. Kermit Lynch could release a Night Train-based beverage and we'd buy it. The 2007 Vale Meão STILL isn't ready. Rubber, plastic and petrol tastes terrible in wine form (or any form, really). Cheap Crasto doesn't taste cheap. And food is good.

I also learned that Krzysztof Kieślowski's The Decalogue will utterly destroy the hearts and minds of anyone with a heart and mind. This is ten hours of real and honest filmmaking with some spectacular acting that makes you mad when you realize it has to end, as you want to stay in that world so completely. Can't recommend it more highly.

Let's do some cataloguing:

#308 - Crab Cakes w/ TJ's North Coast Sparkling & Moroccan Phyllo Pie w/ '10 Calera Viognier

All the leaves are brown (all the leaves are brown) and the sky is gray (and the sky is gray) California dreamin' (Cal-if-orn-ia dreamin') on such a winter's day...

I can't get the song out of my head! The Mamas & The Papas was splashed all over last night's film.

I'd put off watching Chungking Express for about 17 years. Probably rented it three times (speaking of Three Times, that film left Rain & Tears by Aphrodite's Child firmly implanted into my brain for about a month), but just never got to actually pushing play on the remote. No reason. Just didn't. My loss all those years. Gorgeous stuff.

But Slant Magazine's recent feature chronicling their top-200 films of the 90's has caused me to get off my butt (or on my butt, as it were, on the couch) and work the list, catching up on the films I missed, filling in the holes created by so much time wasted on silly things too numerous to list here (but I'm looking squarely at you, NFL).

So, as California Dreaming rumbles around in my head, I offer two California wines with food that made the California freshness sing.

#307 - Vietnamese-Marinated Lamb Riblets With '09 Dandelion Shiraz-Reisling & Brandade With '09 San Clodio

Golly, election night was barrels of fun.

I never expected the Obama ground game to nail it so completely, so thoroughly as they did. Can't wait to see the final breakdowns, county-by-county, with real data showing demographic shifts. Thank you Republicans for continuing to hold onto a 1980s playbook for the 2012 world. You continue to warm the cockles of Democratic hearts with your ignorance as to how this country has changed.

Enough of that. Food and wine is party-neutral. With these two pairings, we found one that was technically fine but tremendously boring and one that took us right back to Portugal in the best possible sense.

Pairing #1: Vietnamese-marinated lamb riblets, jalapeño-cream cheese pierogis and soy-balsamic roasted pearl onions with 2009 Dandelion Vineyards Lion's Tooth of McLaren Vale Shiraz-Riesling ($20 - Binny's)

Election night food! We stayed away from a bacchanal on election night. Our nerves couldn't take it.

#306 - A Potpourri Of Pairings

Geesh! It's been two weeks.

We here at FWW haven't been in the type-y mood as this election has sapped the strength of even the strongest of oxen. It's been head-in-the-sand time in our house, sitting very still, letting the time pass and hoping it does without incident, desperately wanting the polls reflect an accurate reality.

The Ney house endorsement is to the right. Always has been, always will be.

But it's time to clean house. Keeping busy on something other than following election coverage will help to keep me sane during this longest of days.

Today's effort is merely for cataloguing purposes, as nothing in the last two weeks blew us away. But some nice moments of pairing pleasantness occurred so let's put those to electronic paper.