#115 - Thomas Keller-ish Chicken And Burgundian Cheese With An '06 Jurançon Sec

Last night's quick meal was another attempt to find the limits of Thomas Keller chicken with white wine.

We gave it a go with red two weeks ago and it only reaffirmed our love for white with the bird.

To plagiarize myself:

"TK chicken got us on the white Burgundy train with a delicious Viré Clessé.

And we loved it with an Auxey Duresses white Burgundy last month. While not particularly good with two Pinot Blancs, it was fine Fourth of July stuff with a Grüner Veltliner and a Hungarian white while being not too shabby with a bargain Sancerre."

This one fell in the middle with an '06 Clos Uroulat Jurançon Sec. Sort of a half-ass selection in many ways. It's been sitting in the fridge for weeks and had to be drunk.

Food: TK chicken with Delice de Bourgogne, baguette and mâche

Quick roasted bird with a tasty salt level and a switch-up with white pepper added. We're craaaazy. Juicy enough with the good skin. It's Thomas Keller chicken. There are times it feels just a wee bit rote. Then we eat it and love every minute of it.

Delice de Bourgogne cheese eaten the day it came in, which is different than in the past. Wasn't as magically delicious but still quality cheese. This one needs some..."house aging," we'll call it. More firm and simple instead of that slowly activated funkiness that we love so much.

Baguette with the cheese and mustard and torrontés jelly on the side, which weren't really touched. The cheese was good enough.

Mâche salad to round out the plate.

Quickly thrown together but didn't taste like it. The kind of meal that made me, at the mid-point, relish in the delicious familiarity of it all.

Wine: 2006 Charles Hours Clos Uroulat Cuvée Marie Jurançon Sec ($23 - WDC)

It's been sherry-ized! Two things. We didn't decant, which was recommended with this wine (a 2 1/2 hour decant last time) and the bottle sat in the kitchen fridge for weeks.

I don't see a decant helping the sherry quality now present but the sherry-ness may have come from the deep freeze it got since it was put in the fridge.

Who knows? One more bottle to treat better and find out.

Given all that, still not bad and kinda welcome. The sherry notes served only as a faint framework to be acknowledged more than ruining the enjoyment of anything. Subtle pineapple and orange blossom notes were still present with some dried flowers. This one already had that vicious mouthfeel and smoky notes to transition naturally to a sherry-like wine so...

Didn't hate it. Even kinda liked it for all its age and flaws most likely imposed upon it to a degree.

Pairing: 86 Not too shabby

Best with the chicken. The salt on the chicken killed the front end of the wine but as it transitioned from the front to the mid to the finish, a great progression happened with an oil and smoke middle and a surprising, yet subtle orange blossom and honeyed lemon finish. The chicken skin seemed to allow the wine to find a bit of its former self.

Disjointed and odd with the cheese. Tasted like someone took liquid smoke to a pile of crushed rocks. Nothing to recommend.

Fine enough with the greens.

Overall, it was the surprise that the wine did anything with the food after tasting the sherry-like quality right away that made it entirely acceptable and even welcome.

#54 - Chicken Piccata, Mustardized Potatoes & Asparagus With An '06 Jurançon Sec

As a parting shot before retiring from the exhausting business of helping old ladies decide between one $5 bottle of wine over another, one of our favorite wine people at Wine Discount Center recommended a wine from a appellation I didn't even know existed.

Wine Discount Center is easily one of the best wine shops in the city, maybe the best for its sheer variety, frequent turnover and three people (down to two) that work there who have been unbelievably helpful and taught us a lot over the years.

The times I've been asked about wine and how to navigate the seemingly insurmountable amount of information you have to know in order to understand even the basics and avoid drinking bad wine, Wine Discount Center has always been the example. Find a shop employed with good people that share your taste and pick their brain to death.

WDC has also become akin to going to the toy store as a 12 year-old, sifting through the Star Wars action figures to find the Gamorrean Guard or Nien Nunb.

Spending an off-day going to different wine shops carries with it the same feeling as my mom running errands to Paul's, K-mart and Target and I get to do a complete sweep of every Star Wars section. I'm 12 again.

But I digress.

Food: Chicken piccata with mustardized potato and asparagus

What was supposed to be a rather thrown-together meal, cleaning out the fridge before vacation, turned into something pretty great.

It's just chicken piccata. But it didn't end up that way.

Some of that had to do with the sauce. Instead of reducing a half-cup of chicken broth down to a quarter-cup, Mrs. Ney reduced a cup and a half down to a quarter-cup, making for an intense, darker, earthy sauce coupled with capers, kalamata olives, butter and a good amount of lemon juice.

It resulted in a more concentrated and delicious version of chicken piccata.

Even though we just had mustard asparagus the day before, the asparagus, too, had to be used up along with potatoes. Things were bordering on 'old' in the fridge and cupboard. So, mustard-drenched grilled asparagus with a sort of mustard dry potato salad made sense. We worried about it being mustard and mustard with a side of mustard but it wasn't. Turned out great, especially with the wine.

On that...

Wine: 2006 Clos Uroulat Cuvée Marie Jurançon Sec ($23 - WDC)

I stupidly assumed that Jurançon was some sub-appellation of Jura near Burgundy and based on chardonnay. It's not. It's located in southwest France near the Pyrenees, is known more for its sweet wines based primarily on the same Gros Manseng grape as the dry offerings and produces intense wines on the darker end of the white spectrum showing pineapple, melon and banana flavors.

This was a dry version, 90% Gros Manseng, 10% Corbu.

All honey and cat pee on the nose and on the palate right out of the bottle. Tight and funky. We were told to decant this, something we've never done with a white. Gave it a 2 1/2 hour decant on ice and it opened up beautifully.

Very concentrated flavors of honey, banana, green pepper (!), pine needles, Pine-Sol, smoked pineapple, maybe nutmeg? and a sort of brighter oil. Good viscous body with a smooth finish. Rich.

Never had anything like it. As a very basic description, it has small similarities to a Heredia white. Only in the same, very broad realm but serves as a starting point to describing it.

And given its concentration and verve, it should be age-worthy.

Completely unique to our world and we'll be buying more. Great stuff.

Pairing: 91 - Made a very good meal something pretty original and great in our world with the wine

The food was a darker version of what we expected.

But the wine brought it to a place populated with 12,000 different flavors, changing all the time. Something new with each bite and something to ponder and figure out each time.

Piccata is Italian but this tasted French Country, something that seemed to fit with a wine and region we've never had.

Tasted right and just.

And delicious.