Bittman Lamb with 2004 La Rioja Alta Viña Ardanza

Here's an example of a pairing where the food was delicious, and the wine was delicious, and the pairing was certainly fine enough because those two things existed in such close proximity to each other.

Mark Bittman inside-out lamb persillade recipe from NYT Cooking. Trader Joe's leg of lamb, with the addition of late-season oregano and thyme from the patio. Watercress-mint-serrano-tomato-pomegranate seed salad with bread and butter to accompany.

Perfectly cooked lamb with nice herbal punch. Delicious salad. It was everything we wanted from a meaty meat fest. Something to meander slowly through, while loving the sort of regionlessness it offered. Kind of southern French, a bit of northern Italian meat simplicity (courtesy of Bittman being Bittman), sorta kinda could have been Spanish, which we tried to angle towards with the wine.

This was our first tasting of the 2004 La Rioja Alta, a longtime house favorite, and it was wildly similar to other vintages with a caveat. Very pretty cedar notes, with cherry-spice chocolate bonbons to start that moved out of the picture at just the right time, before it became too blunt, transitioning to something so suave and light, with light notes of tobacco and dust.

La Rioja Alta is Lopez de Heredia with a bit more gusto in the tradional Rioja world, and has something like a house memory in taste. More than most wineries, year after year, we get exactly this in terms of flavor, but this vintage really nails it in its preciseness and knowing when to properly transition. In a couple of other vintages, the concentration (read: sap) hung around a wee bit too long.

A nice pairing, because all the elements present were nice. Oddly, for me, it was the best with the watercress salad, tasting like a cool Spanish breeze.