#212 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New feature here at FWW.

It's TWIB notes, a roundup of food and wine from weeknight meals, BYOs, lunches, leftovers and anything else that might have happened that involved food with wine.  Just hum the theme to This Week In Baseball while reading and it becomes interactive.

Let's get right to it.

Sunday Dinner:  Leftover Daniel Boulud Fennel Balls With a 2007 Rhône tasting

Boulud fennel risotto balls leftover from June, when they exploded to great effect with a cheap 2009 Schild Estate GMS.

Mrs. Ney made 50 balls then, we ate 18 in June, another 18 Sunday and brought some to co-workers to sample...and there's STILL MORE!

Original recipe here. Switched up the pepper in the coulis the first time, using sweet picanté peppadew and it was one of many things we adored about that meal.  Back to the original recipe this time, using piquillo peppers and blending in some leftover carrot purée.  Not as good but still tasty.  The fennel balls as well suffered from not being freshy-fresh but it turned into gussied-up Fancy Frozen Food Sunday in delicious ways.  Pomegranate seeds drizzled over the entire plate again with an arugula salad with lemon thyme to finish.

#112 - BBQ Skirt & Bean/Corn/Pepper Salad With '07 Pallières Les Racines

Efforts were made to replicate the bean, corn and pepper salad with this exact wine from Ad Hoc last month.

We were shocked! Shocked, I say, just how good of a pairing that was.

Probably perfect when talking about a bite of food and sip of wine.

While there was nothing wrong in the least with the salad - and it was actually better than the one we had at the restaurant - the pairing with the salad and overall didn't reach those heights.

Which led to other questions, like not decanting last night's wine and the difference between a half-bottle and full bottle.

Food: BBQ skirt steak with bean, corn and pepper salad with arugula

Looked Californian, tasted Texan. Or Southwestern.

Big, juicy, BBQ flavor from a sauce found in the freezer. It was probably from the beef brisket in May, which was part of a larger batch from a beef brisket in January. Or not. We're confused about where that came from.

Boatloads of allspice flavor that was nonetheless balanced and delicious. Surprising. Worked great with the skirt steak.

Pinto beans, corn, shallots, bacon, peppadew (sweet piquanté pepper - looks like a tomato and a pepper had a baby), pea shoots and oregano in the salad. The star of the meal with the steak a close second. Sort of made up on the fly in an effort to mimic the salad at Ad Hoc, it came out better - more meaty and substantial and could easily be a lunch by itself. I think we found something here. This will be made again.

An arugula salad to top things off.

Something turned this meal in an unexpected direction. My nomination goes to the allspice and pinto beans. They turned the meal into Cowboy Chow in a pretty great way.

What it did with the wine was another matter.

Wine: 2007 Domaine Les Pallières "Les Racines" Gigondas ($38 - Knightsbridge)

Grape: Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Clairette

Region: Gigondas

Vintage (WS): 95 - Drink or hold - Ripe, rich, powerful reds thanks to long Indian summer at harvesttime. Grenache is heady and rich, so Mourvèdre and Cinsault key for balance. Best wines are classic hedonistic delights, though some are over-the-top

Predominantly Grenache. A winery just bought in part by Kermit Lynch after being owned by the same family for 150 years.

Just bought three full bottles of this. To decant or not to decant. Probably should have decanted. Or not. I don't know. At Ad Hoc, we had a half-bottle so a decant to open it up to that point of half-bottle accelerated aging might have been wise but I didn't want to kill it off since I didn't know the guts of this wine to any extent. It opened up a month ago more with food and tasted delicious right away with a pop-and-pour then.

So we started our three-bottle cycle with a pop-and-pour as a starting point. Early verdict: Needs time.

Wet herbs on the nose right out of the bottle. Similar dark red berry fruits on the palate with the same red licorice explosion, a touch of Rhône-y fruit cake and kirsch, more heat than before and a pretty texture. Overall, a darker, more brooding wine than before as well. The bursting, bright licorice notes went back into hiding rather quick and the wine settled into Quality, Bargain Rhône territory that wasn't as transcendent as our previous experience.

A lot of balance and we would even say it was a very good wine right now. But after our experience with it last month (and trying it at Chez Panisse as well the next night with different results), the Les Racines might be going through some growing pains right now. A bit volatile right now, jumping around like a spastic child that you know, with a little maturity, is going to turn out to be a genius.

The full bottles could use at least six months to a year. We'll try another then to see if more should be bought.

Pairing: 86 Solid and Good, but somewhat of a letdown with the expectations

The food played above the wine as a pairing. Tons of food flavors that played right into our comfort zone.

Everything in the wine played nice with the food (well...except with the arugula), it just never reached any level of surprising or complex. Wasn't ordinary or boring and, at times, was interesting and good. A minimum level of great Rhône tastiness was there.

But it was kinda like going out with friends you haven't seen in years with the anticipation of having a great time and afterwards, you realize it wasn't as great of a time as you anticipated. A good time, sure. Great...well...

My anticipation may have killed my ability to take it as it was.

Next time, we might try it with food that's more Rhône food specific. Something more catered to Rhône wine.

This one's not ready to field just anything.

#118 - Cassoulet With '07 Pallières Terrasse De Diable Plus A Couple Notes

We just don't have these flavors in our house.

Extremely subtle, balanced, delicate flavors.

Balanced but subtle. Subtle but delicate. Balanced but delicate.

Subtle and balanced and delicate...with a lot of 'buts' instead of 'ands,' though.

Elements teetered on the verge of evaporating into other flavors but never quite did.

It was the kind of meal that left us...not necessarily wanting...but left us feeling like we just eat a meal at a very solid restaurant, dropped a decent amount of money, left feeling good and full but also left feeling...on the precipice of...bored.

And that's even with a pairing that wandered frequently into great.

Food: Pork Shoulder and Weisswurst Cassoulet with a mâche salad

Cook's Illustrated cassoulet, numero tres, since the inception of this here blog. First time was a meat-fest with Argyle sparkling rosé. Second time, the meat extravaganza was cut in half with the herbs amped up and served with a Loire rosé for the Super Bowl.

Both of those versions came out much lighter than we expected. It's a good freakin' recipe. This one came off light as well. But possibly too light...or too subtle. With less meat again, it may have needed more herbal punch. Or maybe the mustard drench used on asparagus and Brussels sprouts in the previous preparations. Utterly enjoyable, though. It was a pretty bowl o' cassoulet that got better as the elements congealed together over the hour or so we ate it.

More meat, less meat, more herbs, mustard? Who knows.

We liked this one. Just didn't love it.

Great northern beans, pork shoulder, "weisswurst with parsley" from Gene's in Lincoln Square, onion, shallot, carrots, san marzano tomatoes, roasted garlic, duck stock, muscadet, herbes de provence and bread crumbs with parsley.

Could have been the pairing. Again...even though the pairing was pretty great at times.

Wine: 2007 Domaine Les Pallières Terrasse De Diable Gigondas ($30 - WDC)

Grape: 90% Grenache and 5% each of Mouvèdre and Clairette

Region: Gigondas

Vintage (WS): 95 - Drink or hold - Ripe, rich, powerful reds thanks to long Indian summer at harvesttime. Grenache is heady and rich, so Mourvèdre and Cinsault key for balance. Best wines are classic hedonistic delights, though some are over-the-top

The other wine from Domaine Les Pallières. I've blathered on about the first one, Les Racines, on more than a few occasions. That wine with the corn and pepper salad at Ad Hoc in July wins the 2010 Best Food and Wine Pairing Award for me. It's a benchmark of ridiculous foody-winey goodness.

This is the brother of that one and the first time Domaine Les Pallières, now owned by Kermit Lynch and the guys behind Vieux Télégraphe, split the vintage into two bottles. With the success of these two, it looks like that's going to be a permanent thing going forward.

Neither is considered to be better than the other and each sells for roughly the same price, but the Terrasse De Diable is generally considered to be taken from better vines.

Macerated dark raspberry on the nose right now. Tart and juicy raspberry and cherry with some tar on the palate before decanting for one hour.

After an hour at the start of the meal, we hit what was probably a window of the wine closing down. Came off soft. Very grenache-like but lacking a more delineated flavor structure. Small hits of earth (we wanted more), tiny hits of licorice (more, please) but a nice punch of pepper mixed with the raspberry notes that gradually (and gracefully) turned to a solid black cherry.

Then it started to come out of its shell after about two hours with the fruit becoming more expressive and the body and mouthfeel starting to distinguish itself, but seemed to need the food to get there. The acid woke up and the tannins started to do its job.

Turned into something at times delicious. 2+ hour decant seems to be the way to go. Gotta like grenache and want to deal with its occasional finicky nature. I do for the most part.

I like the "Les Racines" better for its huge bright licorice core but this one is technically more balanced once it gets going.

Pairing: 91 Tasted like love as a pairing

Two elements that separately weren't completely our bag, but together, they were helpful, nice and full of nuance.

Both were delicate and touchy, like two sensitive friends that, when together, have the nuts to actually say what they feel. They need each other to make up for the lack of aggressiveness and personality they project to the rest of the world separately.

But overall, with the pairing positively pleasing from a potent potable point of view, everything was too understated. More than usual at a time when we wanted the opposite.

Previously, we stuck to the rosé world with cassoulet. This time, we went for red.

But that's not to say that rosé didn't make an appearance.

Two quick notes: At times, I can be a bit snobby when it comes to the crap wine that people blow their money on. Yellow Tail certainly fits the bill when it comes to that. Don't get the love and never will.

BUT!!! Yellow Tail Sparkling Rosé ($6 - Trader Joe's), drank last night before dinner, made me eat every arrogant word I've ever said about the Yellow Tail line (the chardonnay can still eat me, though - that's terrible). Tasted like raspberry/strawberry Crush soda and a touch of cream soda were mixed together with nearly all the sugar drained out. Not dry, not sweet, it's as if they accidentally fell into something that tastes almost graceful and intentional.

Not saying it's anything great, there's just nothing wrong with it. If served at a party or event, I'd be completely fine with drinking it all night. Most likely nothing to recommend with food but as a sipper...yes, please. I'll take it.

And at some point, I'd like to do a "Wine Under $10 With Food To Match" feature here on this blog. One pairing in that feature will be Gino's Frozen Sausage Pizza with 2008 Chariot Gypsy ($5 - Trader Joe's). Served for Frozen Food Sunday this week, the Chariot Gypsy by itself isn't anything noteworthy. Kinda fruit-bomby and borderline dull. Introduce some fennel sausage and tomato into the equation and the herbal notes explode in the wine. Tons of creamy sage came forth and mix beautifully with the food. The fruit in the wine settles down into something much less sweet/brawny, becoming more balanced with the herbal elements and begins to alternate nicely between a brighter and darker berry blend of fruit goodness. I couldn't stop reaching for the glass after every bite. With a 2-for-1 deal on the pizzas, the entire meal for the both of us combined came to about $17. And we loved it.

Even better than the 2004 Chariot Sangiovese pairing with pizza from March. We'll be following Chariot wines until they stop making such things. They're tasty.

#100 - San Francisco

A little over two years ago, we had what was the best restaurant food day of our lives.

Lunch at Chez Panisse Café and dinner at French Laundry.

That was a good day.

After the last Cleveland trip in April "didn't take," another trip out of the increasingly wearisome Chicago was needed tout suite. How about a cheap enough two-day trip back to San Francisco and its 60-degree weather when it's 95 crotch-sweatingly hot degrees in Chicago? Yeah...that'll do.

And in many ways, the great restaurant day from two years was duplicated right down to the owners of the two restaurants.

Ad Hoc Restaurant - Yountville

Right down the street from the French Laundry, Ad Hoc is the third Thomas Keller restaurant within a stone's throw of each other in Yountville, ten miles north of the city of Napa.

Opened in 2006, the place was originally a place holder for an inevitable burgers and 1/2 bottles restaurant Keller was planning, but the response he got from the comfort-food joint led him to keep the concept going.

And for that, we thank him. It was spectacular.

$49 four-course meal served family-style in a small, 14 table space that nonetheless feels airy while having a laid-back comfort and sparkle to it. Completely casual. Wear what you like.

We caught Memphis BBQ night:

Frisee & Bitter Greens Salad

Sungold cherry tomato, pickled pearl onion, hush puppy crouton, spiced tillamook cheddar

Memphis Style Barbeque

Wagyu beef brisket, grilled fatted calf andouille sausage, pulled pork sliders, savoy cabbage slaw, yellow corn and rancho gordo pinquito beans

Panteleo

Marshall's Farm wildflower honey, suncrest peaches

Chocolate Swiss Roll

Hazelnut crunch, vanilla ice cream

Wines:

Two glasses of NV (?) Schramsberg Blanc de Noir to start

1/2 bottle of 2007 Schloss Gobelsburg Grüner Veltliner with the frisee salad

1/2 bottle of 2007 Domaine des Pallieres "Les Racines" Gigondas with the BBQ

One Tokaji Aszu and one Quinto Do Noval Port with dessert

As always, it was in the little things. The hush puppy croutons were ridiculously delicious, especially with a smear of spiced cheddar. The wagyu beef brisket was the best preparation of wagyu I've ever had, beating even the Blackbird version from last October. The sausage...what can I say...great stuff. Something about the spice level. Some of the best honey I've ever had and the freshness of the vegetables was off the charts.

It seemed like we caught a menu (as the menu changes daily) that everyone working at the restaurant was quite fond of and what resulted on the plate told us why. I'll remember those flavors for years.

But what both of us will remember the most about the Ad Hoc meal will be the wine pairing. The grüner was quite good and performed well with the salad. The sparkling rosé was all creamy raspberry with loads of lively bubbles and pinot noir goodness.

But we immediately fell silly in love with the 2007 Domaine des Pallieres "Les Racines Vieilles Vignes" Gigondas. Seems almost wrong how good it was. Mostly Grenache with Syrah, Cinsault and Clairette as well. It was pure silk showing dark red berries and fruit cake notes that on the mid-palate just exploded with red licorice juice. Bright yet brooding at the same time with an almost velvety finish. Wanna get to know Gigondas and what good Grenache can taste like from the Rhône? This one's $30-40. Buy it and find out. Nearly perfect with the BBQ and absolutely perfect with the corn and bean salad. Ab-sol-utely perfect.

A great meal that will be long remembered with a new favorite wine.

Chez Panisse Restaurant - Berkeley

The first time we ate at Chez Panisse two years ago, it was upstairs in the a la carte café and had some great food, even realizing the joys of superlatively-prepared chicken. We always liked chicken enough but that was Chicken.

Always somewhat curious about the downstairs and its set four-course menu, we gave it a go with the caveat that we might cancel if the menu didn't look particularly great to us. After seeing it two days before (they release the menus for the week on Sunday), it sounded good enough with the added prospect that it's Chez Panisse. We'll probably be just fine.

And we were in spades.

Menu:

King salmon carpaccio with cherry tomatoes, cucumbers and basil

Hand-cut pasta with summer chantrelles, squash blossoms and arugula

Becker Lane Farm pork loin alla toscana with fennel sausage, green beans and cranberry beans

Almond nougat and strawberry ice cream cassata

I can take or leave salmon but I could eat this salmon once a week. Bright tomatoes, beautifully light touch with the aioli and generous hits of basil. But the salmon was the star. Terrifically fresh and just so damn tasty. A fine enough pasta, if a tad unmemorable, cooked the definition of al dente. But the pork loin! Oh, the pork loin! Almost didn't want to eat it because it was so pretty with a gentle pink center that faded to the edges with an almost grace. Mixed with the fennel sausage, it was a sumptuous bite of food. Solid dessert and a good capper with French press.

But with the salmon and pork loin, we had one beautiful meal.

Wines:

Two glasses of Cava with the salmon carpaccio = a beautiful pairing.

Two interesting glasses with the pasta, a Corbières Blanc and a white from the Canary Islands. The Corbières showed elegant fruit and the Canary Islands white had a subtle touch of oil mixed with almonds (?) and smoked peach.

1/2 bottle of Domaine des Pallieres "Les Racines" Gigondas. The same wine from Ad Hoc because it was on the menu for $32 freakin' dollars and we loved it. Great again with the pork loin.

A glass of Hüet Demi-Sec Vouvray dessert wine which fell flat with the dessert. I figured it might but wanted to try it.

Two great meals again from Thomas Keller and Alice Waters. For that, we thank them profusely. A special mention should go out to Gianni, our server at Chez Panisse who was an utter joy all night. We wanted to hug him.

I would mention the lunch at Slanted Door if it was worth mentioning. Someone in the kitchen limed the beef carpaccio twice, turning it into a sloppy mess and the tuna tartare and spring rolls were merely fine enough with everything arriving at the table within three minutes of ordering it. We felt a bit rushed, which was a complete departure from the last time we were there and had a fantastic dinner/experience. The bottle of NV Tissot Crément du Jura was quite tasty though with a smoky creaminess and subtle hits of apple and lime.

Gott's Roadside in the Ferry Building, the inspiration for the marinade for fish tacos written about here on a few occasions? Skip it.

But if you're in Berkeley and looking for a quick lunch, run don't walk to Gioia Pizzeria on Hopkins. It's New York-style pizza with a Berkeley bent that made us curse the gods that Chicago refuses to do New York-style pizza right or at all. Crackerbox space, cheap as dirt and freakin' delicious.

All in all, a good trip, a needed trip, a trip that offered oceans breezes and 55-60 degree weather when it was hot as hell in Chicago. People were in sweaters and fleeces in July. I can support that.

I can recommend: Ad Hoc, Chez Panisse, the BART ($19 from Berkeley to SFO), the casual, seemingly normal and generally happy people of San Francisco and the Kia Sportage as a rental (nice little car. Wouldn't own one but nice little car).

Things that I can't: Slanted Door at lunch, Gott's Roadside, mothers flying with four screaming kids in tow, middle-aged women with too much money and a fanny pack that have no internal dialogue, taxi from SFO to Berkeley ($75), the person who thought it was smart to carpet and upholster the BART and the punch of heat in the face upon returning to Chicago (made worse by the fact that I was still in a fleece).

We'll see you soon, Northern California. You're nice.

#216 - San Francisco

Our third trip to the Bay Area in the last four years produced a very nice handful of highlights, a stupefyingly awful lowlight, a comfortable sense of familiarity, tons of interactions with ridiculously friendly, calm people and a relaxing feeling of escape, which was sorely needed.

So...success.  We liked it muchly.

Some impressions:  Torta Frontera by Rick Bayless in O'Hare is the best airport eats we've ever had (and we successfully avoided Bounty Hunter in Napa and Anchor Steam Brewery in SFO.  A first.).  We won't be flying or visiting wine country in August again.  La Quinta, you're always nice and cheap.  Dodge Charger...keep it.  2011 San Francisco summer weather feels like reading the more depressing moments of Kurt Vonnegut (which isn't altogether bad, just foggy-gloomy).  Spanish Table (and the wonderful Joe) was like a candyland for us, reminding us once again that a place deeply entrenched in Spanish-Spanish is desperately needed in Chicago.  Mrs. Ney continued her string of being selected for 'extra screening.'  She's now been tested for a full-body CT scan, a shoe bomb, a liquid/gel bomb, a boob- and/or crotch-bomb (aggressively) and now explosives residue while her companion with the stoic, slightly snarly expression sails right through.  We never expected a veggie-centric lunch could have been so transcendent and a formerly favorite restaurant visited a few hours later would have been such an abomination, tasting like it came from the 'International' section at Denny's.  But easy-peasy and a calming getaway.

This trip:  Chez Panisse in Berkeley, Zuni Café in SF, C Casa Taqueria in Napa, Ubuntu in Napa and Ad Hoc in Yountville.

Hanger Bo Ssäm & Scallion Pancakes With 2008 Rôtie Cellars Southern Blend + One

Ridiculous wine savings alert!

All Dagueneau Silex is $25 off at Binny's right now. You won't see a better price for the best wine on the planet (not just white wine) in my book.

Mrs. Ney just gave me the 2010 and 2011 for Christmas! Mrs. Ney knows what Mr. Ney likes.

And Mrs. Ney had a "fun" time picking up one of the vintages. We're not snobs about pronunciation of wine-related things. Call it what you want, pronounce it how you must. It should never stop a happy wine conversation. Just don't get all uppity and be entirely wrong at the same time. It's...



Oh, and this is the furthest thing from a trophy wine.

Strange customer service experience all around in Chicago of late. Happens every year when it's extremely hot or extremely cold. People get cranky and weird.

Two meals this week that reinforce the idea that food and wine together don't have to be GREAT in order to feel necessary, happy and important. Many times, it's about raising the floor of meals instead of shooting for some enormously high ceiling. If your seemingly average, everyday meals can attain unique levels of satisfaction, you've won.

And you'll be fat and happy.

#104 - Grilled Chicken Thigh & Skordalia With A Ribera Cava

An excursion to Wine Discount Center that was supposed to be a "we're not buying a ton of wine!" trip turned into the exact opposite.

We went to get the wine chronicled today but we couldn't turn down the 2006 Királyudvar reduced to $7 (!). Finding the big brother of Domaine des Pallières "Les Racines" didn't hurt either along with one of Jean-Phillipe Fichet's wines just sitting there, begging to be bought.

It was like reviewing and expanding on wines we very recently drunk and loved. Good trip. Not cheap...but good trip.

Food: Marinated and grilled boneless chicken thighs, skordalia, mâche salad with pomegranate seeds and baguette

Boneless chicken thighs marinated in lemon juice, extra virgin olive oil, oregano, dry white wine, garlic, onion and black pepper, then grilled.

Eerily good. It was just chicken thighs but a great and plentiful char mixed with a generous garlic/onion juiciness made it a "why is this so good?" protein night.

The skordalia was just as good. Lighter than we thought it would be when thinking about what is essentially a potato purée. 1/2 lb. of potatoes, boiled and peeled and blended with almonds, breadcrumbs, garlic, lemon, extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice. Great Greek-style Goodness.

A mâche and parsley salad undressed with pomegranate seeds to clean and lighten things up.

I would have thought this might have ended up feeling like a heavier meal but it wasn't even close. We wiped everything up - all the plentifully prepared chicken and skordalia - and still felt clean and good after the meal. Some of it might have had to do the lemon juice in both main components along with the pomegranate seeds bringing some acid to give everything some lift.

And some of it have to do with bringing some bubbles to the table.

Wine: NV Peñalba López Finca Torremilanos Cava Brut Nature ($14 - WDC)

Grape: Blend of Viura and white Tempranillo

Region: Ribera Del Duero

I've never heard of a Ribera Cava, you? And we couldn't turn down our curiosity for $14.

Straw-colored in the glass, huge green apple peel on the nose that followed through on the palate but mixed beautifully with a pleasing yeasty character that didn't stand up and pronounce its presence like some sparklers. A very distinctive note of peach pit or unsalted sunflower seeds played in the background in a great way and something that made us kind of love it. Very dry and crisp with a short finish, which was our only complaint, making us feel like it was 3/4 of the way from being something that could have contended with a good Champagne. It's $14. Not as good as the Raventós i Blanc "L'Hereu Reserva" Brut Cava for $18 but it's a crowd pleaser on the cheap from a region not known for sparklers at all.

And infinitely better than some of the off-region Italian sparklers we've tried recently. Just much better composed.

Pairing: 92 An example of the wine playing an integral role in balancing the meal

We had a Muscadet in the fridge ready to go. A Muscadet isn't something thought of as a wine that makes a meal heavier in the least, but that could have been the case with this meal if we drank that instead.

It needed the bubbles.

With a potato purée and copious amounts of chicken pieces, the Ribera Cava took everything on the plate and made sure it accented all the brighter notes in the preparation and minimize any heaviness present in the food.

I just don't think a still wine, even a Muscadet, could have done that.

Probably best with the chicken, providing a nice balance with the garlic-onion-lemon juice marinade, making it taste light and savory. It lifted the skordalia, taking a potato purée and making it taste like a light brandade without the fish. Oddly, it was freakin' delicious with the pomegranate seeds, causing the wine to taste like a Blanc de Noirs in many ways and opening up an unexpected and great flavor component towards the end of the meal.

Mostly though, about halfway through the meal, it was when we paused during the meal and took a break for a minute of two and realize the wonderful taste that was marinating in our mouth and throat. It was light but substantial, chockablock with flavors going everywhere but still, and oddly, beautifully balanced.

And the entire meal probably cost $25.

A quick note on another meal. We had a "clean out the fridge" stew-type concoction of leftover chicken, linguiça, tomatoes, garlic, onions, figs, pistachios, paprika, olives and some other refrigerator components served with dipping bread that turned out delicious and tasted like a fancy sloppy Joe. Eaten with a 2005 Alonso del Yerro Ribera Del Duero ($25 (?) - WDC). Showed tons of blackberry, dark cherry and grilled meat notes with a stewed fruit element from the age of the wine. Had to drink it because it was at the closing of its drinking window. Some nice moments, perfectly fine with the food and seemed to get a bit better with some time open, turning into something very representative of what's good about Ribera with some nice wild dark berry fruit but not anything special.