#160 - Ropa Without The Vieja With '06 Mas De Maha +1

Last year, for the Super Bowl, was duck confit and veal sausage cassoulet with a Loire Rosé.

That meal served us well as we watched Bud Light and Doritoes belch and vomit all over my TV viewing experience.

This year was Ben Roethlisberger's move towards "redemption" from being an ugly and deplorable human being...because throwing an oblong ball well in a big game washes away all our transgressions.

Same reaction as last year for me:

No Browns = Don't Care.

With a caveat. The NFL industrial complex - and that includes the deplorable NFL media that might be the biggest collection of meatballs I've ever seen over the last ten years - has become just a little too icky for me. I fear baseball with splashes of college football and basketball and sprinkles of even tennis are my games now. Football is a little too...football-y for my world. And the impetus was probably the FOX dancing robot, a seemingly small concoction of awfulness that might have pushed me over the edge.

But like last year, good food went a long way in being able to stomach the spectacle.

Cuban pot roast without the roast coupled with a a wine we thought nearly done.

Food: Flank Steak with ropa vieja accoutrements and yuca fries with an arugula and pomegranate seed salad

Flank steak marinated in onion, parsley, worcestershire and olive oil, cooked medium rare and placed over a pile of traditional ropa vieja ingredients of onion, poblano, sweet red pepper, garlic, can o'cheap tomatoes [oregano, cumin seeds, pinch of cloves & cinnamon, bay leaves] reduced with veal stock and graciano, topped with parsley.

Instead of stewing the meat and ropa vieja-ness together, they were cooked separately. Became a sort of half-deconstructed deliciousness, allowing the typical bright and clean flavors of the flank steak to show through while still allowing the soul-satisfying Cuban flavors announce its presence. This was great meat with great accompanying flavors that allowed each distinctive flavor to show up at different times (cinnamon at time, cloves occasionally, big poblano presence, all alternating). Not ropa vieja. Ropa vieja's appeal is the sum of all the parts as it becomes something else. This was better, new and will be had again, probably soon. In our flank/hanger/skirt world...the best we've had in a long time.

Solid batch of yuca fries. Each batch is different. This one had that 'it' factor. Served with a Portuguese whiskey sauce-infused mayonnaise.

Arugula and pomegranate seed salad with balsamic and olive oil to finish.

With Cuban food, it begins and ends with Mas de Maha but the 2006 hasn't performed as well of late for us. The tempranillo in the blend lost some of its brightness and lift the last time we had it (no write-up) and the 2007s haven't shown up in Chicago yet.

Wine: 2006 Villa Creek Mas de Maha ($23 - Binny's)

Still good!

Might have just needed some big food flavors to pry open the door. With Mas de Maha, what we love about it is the addition of tempranillo, taking the typical cheaper California Rhône blend out of the world of that dominating flat syrupness and into the realm of distinction and balance.

All raspberries this time, big batch, seeds and all. Like unsweetened raspberry jam in the process of being made. Touch of cherry at times as the tempranillo tried to assert its fading presence but the grenache and mourvèdre is taking over in great ways. Solid phase right now and something we didn't expect in the least as we popped it because we figured we should blow through the last two we have while we still could. Secondary grilled meats and hint of tobacco with enough acid holding on. It's softened considerably since the first time we had it but still possesses a great balance and dark juiciness that hits some place in us that we absolutely love.

A quick wine note: the graciano in the reduction was the 2006 Bokisch Graciano ($8 - Sam's). Tried it before putting it in the pan. Shocked. All booze-soaked chocolate cherries with earth, spice and meat char. Deep. Delicious stuff...still! Tasted like some weird off-region monastrell or mourvèdre blend. All mud with the food when we gave it a go but might have been better than the Mas de Maha by itself, without food, simply because of how odd and weird and good it was. Got a steal with this one.

Pairing: 91 Super Bowl Delight

As with our past experiences with Mas de Maha and Cuban-style food, a melding of the food and wine together happened so gracefully and fully that it became something else, something more than what each offered separately.

The raspberry juiciness brought a brightness to the meal, for sure. But the food also seemed to grab the wine by the shirt collar a bit and throw everything into line. The clove/spice in the food and wine seemed to be the chain that united things but nothing else in the food, wine and food and wine hit a false note. And the pepper on the char with the big fruit in the wine exploded on over the place in stellar ways.

Seemed made for each other and just fit.

So much better than anything emanating from my television as well.

A Quick Pairing Note: Dak Bulgogi with Trader Joe's cheap label Vouvray, the 2009 Lacheteau Demi-Sec ($6). One of the better weeknight pairings we've had in months. Nothing special in the least with this wine on its own, the sweetness in the Vouvray picked up the spice in freakin' delicious Korean hot goodness, tamed it, threw it around like a rag doll and took it to places the dish wouldn't have been by itself. Textbook example of matching a touch of sweet with a touch of heat. Great food, something double-Great with this wine. Pairing Score: 93

#102 - Two Meals With Two Cheapies

A quickie today.

Two quick meals over the weekend with two cheap wines.

#1 - Beef tacos with pico de gallo, white cheddar (?), sour cream and lettuce in corn tortillas with 2006 Bokisch Graciano ($8 - Binny's)

Trader Joe's beef taco mix with homemade pico de gallo. Surprisingly good stuff. Tasted a bit like prepared mix but still satisfying. Very satisfying, actually.

The meal is worth noting due to the bargain wine drank with it. The 2006 Bokisch Graciano showed a bit different than it did six months ago. This time, the fruit was darker with gobs of plum and black cherry. Not sticky. Bigger and dark with a lean mid-palate, still plenty of fine tannin with nice earth and dark spice. Wouldn't pay for the original $24 price tag but at $8, it's one of the top four or five best bargain we've had in that price range. 100% Californian Graciano. Kinda rare. Pairing score: 87

#2 - Seafood sausage, white rice, sesame seed asparagus and a coconut-red curry dipping sauce with 2009 Pircas Negras Torrontés ($14 - Red & White)

What was thought of as being a quick dinner turned into something much more...and made us realize that we probably should have drunk the Crios Torrontés with it instead.

The price of seafood sausage has risen to a still wildly cheap $5.50 for four links at Trader Joe's. Just four months ago, there were, along with the Crios, was the most surprising wine pairing we had had in a long time. All delicious flowers.

This dinner was nearly as tasty as that one in many ways, made great by the superlative coconut milk-red curry paste sauce poured over the rice and used to dip the seafood sausage in.

But the wine, while pleasant enough, didn't come close to measuring up to the Crios. All pineapple cream soda with a touch of almond, somewhat crisp with a tiny hint of a floral element but nothing particularly pronounced. Fine enough, but wouldn't buy it again, even if it was $5 cheaper than the $14 we paid. Pairing score: 83

#28 - Two Meals & Three Wines

A little catch-up.

Two midweek meals.

First up was an attempt at a Greek-style wine can chicken with zucchini bread pudding and arugula.

The Greek aspect never really came through but it was the typical delicious wine can chicken with one difference. This time the thigh was the star with the breast coming in second. Juicy, dark and delicious. One of the best thighs I've ever had. Fig, honey and mustard glaze on the chicken led to some great skin.

It's been five days since we ate this meal and I still don't know if I liked the odd concoction that was zucchini bread pudding. I'm vexed! Ate it all but it was a tad weird.

Which led to our vexing wine experience.

The 2008 Babcock Identity Crisis ($20 In Fine Spirits) was our first wine pairing, bought because it sounded so darn interesting. 100% syrah but not a red wine. Not a white either. Not even a rosé. Skins touched the juice a little longer than a typical rosé and the result is a wine with sort of a copper hue. If I drank it blind (and room temperature), I wouldn't have guessed what it was in a 1000 years. Dry with a mixture of something like apricot and pomegranate. A little creamy spice like cinnamon whipped cream. Bit of a short finish but nothing unpleasant. A wee hint of alcohol in a good way. With the food, it was fine enough but nothing spectacular. Wasn't a good pairing but we could have plowed through and been okay with it.

We didn't plow through. Interested in seeing what the hell would go with the tomatoes in the zucchini bread pudding, I cracked one of our favorite bargain wines, the 2006 Domaine Des Tours Vin De Pays Vaucluse ($17 WDC). Bought on a recommendation from the Rhône lovers at WDC, we gave it a whirl with a fig tart a few months ago and were blown away by the pairing. It's still one of the better pairings of food and wine I've ever had.

A little light in the glass with red fruits of cherry and raspberry. Spice and earth serve as the subtle background with a silky medium finish that makes you want so much more. For $17, it's the best bargain Rhône we've ever had and serves, in my view, as the best introduction to Rhône wines out there. Perfect place to start in my experience with southern France.

But the pairing pretty much sucked. I can still taste the zucchini bread pudding with the wine. All gasoline. The wine completely separated into its component parts and the alcohol won the fight. Best with the arugula (actually pretty great) and good enough with the chicken.

So...we had strike two on us and decided to forfeit the rest of the at-bat.

Live and learn.

Dinner #2 came on the heels of a trip to Binny's in Lincoln Park.

The former Sam's has always been a thorn in our sides. For such a huge place, the selection and pricing was always so ungodly awful.

But when Binny's bought Sam's out three months, they were stuck with a ton of stock that come from suppliers that Binny's doesn't deal with or were in the last year of their drinking window.

Result = DEEEEEP discount extravaganza!

Spent $110. Saved $150 on 14 bottles of wine. Nearly all of the 14 bottles were under $10 marked down from $20-30.

It was a great chance to beef up the wine inventory of bottles we don't have to think about before cracking.

Dinner was leftover Spanish-style beef brisket sandwiches on baguette with mayo. A simple meal to clean out the refrigerator using the brisket from dinner a few days ago.

We drank the 2006 Bokisch Graciano ($8 down from $24) bought in the Binny's trip.

I don't want to get too ridiculous about this wine but if it were $6, we'd be buying this by the case. Something about the difference between $6 and $8 that makes me pause (still might buy a few more, though).

Graciano is mostly only grown in Rioja. It's quintessentially Spanish, all dark cherry and a bit of spice with solid structure and a big nose. Low-cost 100% graciano borders on the simple but nonetheless has a place.

I was leery of a California graciano, figuring it was be all big fruit with no complexity, but for $8, why not?

Wouldn't say the Bokisch was complex, but it was balanced and subtle with a nice layering, even some spice with a floral note and maybe some orange peel. Solid fruit with a wild red berry dominating. Never would have thought it was Californian. At the original price of $24, it's an iffy buy, but it drinks like a good Spanish wine priced in the high teens.

And the pairing was surprisingly good. Good, simple, Spanish-style meal with a good, simple Spanish-style wine.

I can still taste it.