#200 - Revisiting The Very First Pairing

It's fun with numbers!

Today, for the 200th post, we revisit the very first pairing we ever did for this blog, Wine Can Chicken with 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinriegl, which started out the blog with a bang and served us much better than post #2, Church Cookbook Lasagna with 2008 Castle Rock Pinot Noir.  My bowels are probably still scraping out the nastiness of that concoction.

We soon rebounded from that calamity though with pairing post #5, Wine Can Chicken and saffron risotto with 1996 Heredia Gravonia that saddled right up to the food in great Spanish ways.

Thomas Keller Chicken quickly usurped Wine Can Chicken as the chicken standard with pairing post #83, our first foray into seriously considering chardonnay as a drinkable grape and something we might actually want.  But WCC found itself left in the dust, so much so that Mrs. Ney struggled today to find her WCC mojo in the kitchen, something that once upon a time came to her quite naturally.

Since this is #200, let's look back at other number milestones in 25-post increments that starts out with a boatload of more chicken (and risotto):

#12 - Wine Can Chicken and Two Wines

So...another Wine Can Chicken.

It's important to note that each Wine Can Chicken has been decidedly different. The first one was intensely herbal. The second one really kicked up the hoisin angle and this one...

All apricot and dill.

Most importantly, I don't want chicken any other way after having WCC.

On another note, if you're going to have something outside of red meat, duck and some other odd bird/game/beefy goodness, WCC is the answer nine times out of ten.

Who needs another rendition of pork?

Food: Apricot/Dill Wine Can Chicken with Asparagus, Baguette and French Butter

Simple meal. Easy to make for Mrs. Ney after a dinner with the family the night before.

Chicken had the usual sublime flavor with the apricot fully infused into it and the dill working with the chicken skin, standard asparagus serving as a good green vegetable with Trader Joe's baguette, something that's become as good as a fresh-baked baguette in many ways (it's frozen, made to throw briefly in the oven).

Wine: 2007 Domaine Giachino Altesse & 2007 Turkey Flat Rosé

Two wines because I'm a boob and chilled the wrong Giachino three days ago.

Domaine Giachino is an interesting story. It's wine from the Savoie (all the history that comes with tales of Savoy), the French Alps mountainous area on the southeastern border, a region that feels it's quite autonomous from France proper and do things a bit differently. The Vin de Savoie wine usually doesn't make its way to the U.S. but recently, we've seen a few bottles here and there (Whole Foods even has one now).

I chilled the Altesse, which is made from the grape of the same name that's indigenous to the region. Nobody else in the world makes it. Descriptions mention peaches and almond. Maybe. I got pears with a hint of herbs and an ever-so-slight hint of oily dryness. Simple. Pleasant enough.

I meant to chill the Abymes, which is made from the Jacquere grape, also indigenous to the region and only grown there. It's aged in its lees for a bit and imparts an oiliness that so pronounced and so absolutely great, I really should buy a case. All. Oil. Totally new to us up until six months ago.

C'est la vie (look at me! I speak French!).

Well...the Altesse didn't do much with the food. So we opened the Turkey Flat Rosé. It's Mrs. Ney's favorite rosé and is definitely in my top three, probably because I'm still uncertain whether I like Grenache or not.

It's mostly Grenache with some Shiraz, Cabernet and Dolcetto. Bit of strawberry in this one with maybe some watermelon. Got some tannins initially but it went away. Definitely a tad floral. Pretty. Interesting. Changes. Goes down wonderfully.

Pairing: Solid with the rosé, not with the Giachino

Settled on the rosé and messed around with the Giachino.

Mrs. Ney brought some peri-peri sauce to the meal and it became a great example of what certain wine does with certain food. With the sauce, the rosé was perfect. Subtle and played at the perfect pitch in the background with the right level of fruit coming to the fore. Without the sauce, it was merely good. Nothing wrong with it at all, but just merely good. A very approachable wine overall. Great wine by itself and always fun. And great when it isn't so...Grenache-y (read: A bit gnarly).

Giachino bordered on a dull white. Bland in most every sense. Drinkable and technically a fine little wine, just not interesting with this food.

#70 - Curried Wine Can Chicken & Spinach Pie With '05 Huët Clos Du Bourg Demi-Sec

This...was...stupid good!

There's been a general feeling in the Ney house recently that we've hit a bit of a lull when it comes to pairings that approach great.

We've had good, borderline great food. And we've had some good, if not great wines. The two just never seemed to come together for a great food and wine pairing.

In fact, before this meal, the best pairing we probably had in the last month was seafood sausage, rice cakes and bok choy with the 2009 Crios Torrontes. Nothing against that pairing. It was glorious. But given everything, we seem to have been in a bit of a pairing rut lately. Tons of "perfectly fine" pairings, a few "that'll work"s and a lot of "take or leave"s.

Until tonight. Until...Tonight!

Food: Curry Can Chicken with a raita, chicken glaze on the side and spinach pie

Chicken prepped the night before using twice the recommended salt along with pepper and baking soda rubbed all over it and stuck in the refrigerator overnight. Soda can stuffed with the crappy Alois Gross Muskateller from Monday with ginger and garlic and stuck up its rump.

Chicken glazed with butter, orange marmalade, "hot" curry powder, lemon zest and sambal oelek, a sort of hot pepper paste popular in Southeast Asia, then thrown in the oven.

Came out Beaut-i-ful! The extra salt intensified the curry, sambal oelek and marmalade to such a degree that every flavor continued to linger in such a glorious way long after we swallowed. Wasn't hot. Came off more like a deep honeyed char with orange hints and a perfectly-pitched curry with oodles of depth. Best wine can chicken yet. With the glaze on the side to remoisten everything, there really was no contest. Best ever.

Chicken was over a raita, an yogurt-based Indian condiment usually used as a cooling agent for the heat that comes with things like a curry. This one was yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice, shallots, onions, mint, fennel fronds and toasted coriander and white pepper. This was probably the glue to the meal. While the chicken glaze wasn't hot enough to need a cooling agent, it served as something to cut any richness that the glaze offered while serving as a bridge to the feta in the spinach pie.

It's just frozen Trader Joe's spinach pie but Mrs. Ney really didn't feel like cooking after the last two days and the thought of another green salad or prepping another starch seemed like way too much work. Didn't need anything else in the least. I've said it before and I'll say it again, best frozen product along with seafood sausage at Trader Joe's by far. Flaky, fresh, not too feta-y, not salty in the least and just all around freakin' weirdly delicious.

So we had wine can chicken with frozen spinach pie. On paper, before eating it, it would have seemed like a fine enough meal, tasty and good. Perfect with a catalogue wine. Easy-peasy and we would have moved on, happy enough.

In reality, it was the best meal we've had here in a few months.

And the wine played as big of a part.

Wine: 2005 Domaine Huët Clos Du Bourg Demi-Sec Vouvray ($30-ish - WDC?)

Grape: 100% Chenin Blanc (biodynamic)

Region: Vouvray

Vineyard: Clos Du Bourg (Le Haut Lieu and Le Mont being Huët's other regular vineyards)

Vintage: 93 - warm, dry season and ideal weather at harvest; low yields led to concentrated, balanced wines (WS)

It's been sitting in the cellar, laid on its side right in the front, staring at me for over a year. I constantly thought, "Just drink the damn thing. It's probably only marginally cellar-worthy anyway."

Straw yellow in the glass. Lightly honeyed nose. On the palate, white peach to peach with honeysuckle, a bit of minerality and a glorious underlying floral note that wasn't overly pronounced but served as a beautiful base throughout and made everything seamless. Just kept giving with great precision. Straight-up off-dry. Vacillated between being almost rich and being lifting and light, walking a great line. Faint secondary and indistinguishable tropical fruit notes. A graceful acidity that wasn't bracing or overt but was enough to allow everything to play nice and come through. Medium to slightly short finish propped up mostly by the acid, keeping it from being a ridiculously good wine and maybe the best white wine I've ever had. If longer, it would have made the wine almost perfect. Long life to this one. By golly, this is pretty!

We'll be doggedly following this vineyard of the Huët line. Maybe not this exact vintage, but more will be bought and soon.

Pairing: 94 Simply great

All the soldiers lined up and saluted. This would have been a pretty great meal without wine. With this wine, it approached perfect. It made us think if the finish to the wine was a wee bit longer, it would have been. And would have sat right alongside the Asian beef filet with Yalumba and dry-aged beef with '94 Heredia pairing. For now, it slides right below those since I started this blog.

The white peach and honeysuckle in the wine danced with the feta and raita with the graceful touch of acidity frolicking beautifully with the chicken glaze.

The meal itself had some great bridges that surprisingly stayed right in the same range of weight and spice and the wine filled in any gaps that weren't bridged. Everything was so fluid, flowing and effortless.

It was a thrown-together Wednesday night meal for the most part and it ended up feeling like something quite unique and pretty remarkable.

#1 - Wine Can Chicken & '99 Prager

Food: Wine Can Chicken

Quickly making its way into our rotation, Wine Can Chicken is simple. Take a soda can (I think I've made the transition from 'pop' to 'soda.' Got sick of the looks.) and fill it 2/3 of the way with a decent, cheap white wine and fill the rest with whatever herbs you want/have within reach.

Mrs. Ney used herbs de Provence, more rosemary, lemongrass and orange blossom water if I recall correctly.

Stick the can up the chicken's rear, prop it upright so it looks like it might come alive and stick it in the oven.

The glaze for the chicken was Asian-ish since Riesling pairs so well with such things, comprised of a soy sauce, hoisin, ginger beer reduction with salt.

All of it was served on mâche with baguette and butter.

Wine: 1999 Prager Riesling Weissenkirchen Smaragd Steinreigl - $16 Wine Discount Center

Why so cheap for a '99 Austrian Riesling from a good house? Probably because most of the reviews for the bottle consider it to be past its drinking window.

Robert Parker of Wine Advocate:

The 1999 Riesling Smaragd Weißenkirchen Steinriegl has a mineral-dominated nose. This medium-bodied, silky-textured and tangy wine is redolent with lemony minerals,quinine, and flowers. This admirably balanced wine should be consumed the next 7-9 years.

Other places on these internets had it for upwards of $45 so we figured why not? We've had this 2005 before and loved it.

Here's what the terms on the bottle mean purely for the purpose of forcing me to learn this stuff:

Wachau: Highly-respected Austrian region known for its Rieslings and Grüners

Smaragd: Wachau-specific designation. Has to do with when the grapes can be picked, when the wine can be released and has the highest alcohol level (> 12.5%), low sugar level, typically the richest and driest (compared to Federspiel with an alcohol level between 11.5 & 12.5% and Steinfeder below that). Order = Steinfeder (light, racy), Federspiel (elegant, medium-bodied) and Smaragd (ripe, full-bodied)

Steinriegl: Particular vineyard/area

Weissenkirchen: City near Steinriegl

By golly, that seems excessively complicated. Here's a pretty good primer.

Pairing: It worked quite well

I don't have oodles of experience with being able to immediately recognize with complete authority whether a wine is past its prime, but the fruit was drying out, almost completely there.

But there was still a liveliness to this wine, especially when the salt came to the party, bringing out it's acidity. What I saw as hints of smoke and nuts, Mrs. Ney saw as a butterscotchy element (she has an infinitely better palate than me). Dried peaches and a little spice with a tiny floral note (?) as well.

Oddly, it paired best with the baguette and butter, making me think if it would be best drank as a pre-dinner aperitif kinda thingy with a lil snack.

In the end, though, the wine didn't conflict at all, stood up to everything and brought an pleasing element to the table. Reminded me of the Robert Lopez de Heredia whites not in its flavor profile but in what brings to a pairing - a dried element that is expressed first in its fruit and secondary flavors and it's style second. Wasn't bone-dry, rather something approaching off-dry (?) and everything was still rather focused. Deep yellow in the glass that resembled urine.

We just bought four more bottles to watch this one die a nice death.

#59 - Red-Spiced Wine Can Chicken & '06 Ponzi Pinot Noir

Initial thoughts were that we were trying to force-fit a pairing here.

Not that chicken and pinot noir is necessarily bad, just that it can feel a bit uninspired. We were craving both, though, so Mrs. Ney did everything she could to lubricate the pairing, resulting in some pretty inspired results.

Wine: Cinnamon and sumac rubbed wine can chicken with cherry-rosewater jam, mâche salad and baguette with butter and explorateur cheese

Mrs. Ney pinot noired up the chicken! Rubbing it with cinnamon and sumac made for a great skin and much more spicy-earthy quality than previous wine can chickens. But the star was the cherry-rosewater jam. Cherry jam mixed with rosewater and black pepper. It brought some acid and really let the wine open up.

Good eats and juicy chicken made better by the wine.

Wine: 2006 Ponzi Pinot Noir ($30 - Binny's)

What used to be a graceful, straightforward, fruity pinot noir that made us love Oregon pinot noir has started to become more complex. We had this one back in January and saw that it had started to become more dark and deep but had maybe lacked the leafy quality that made us love it.

It's back and, most likely, it was brought out by lubricating the food in the direction of the wine more than pistachio-crusted lamb could. Instead of relying on lamb itself to carry the day, Mrs. Ney played up many pinot noir-ish secondary flavors to ease things along, letting the wine sort of do its thing with a ton of support along the way.

Popped and poured. A touch darker and brownish in the glass than I remember. Alcohol right away but it blew out quickly. The previously immediate and pronounced straight cherry note is gone, giving way to a slightly more tart black cherry. Even before the chicken skin, cinnamon and a bit of spice box. The dry autumn leaf quality has changed to a wet bundle of leaves and earth quality. Sort of forest floor-ish without the mossy quality.

About 30 minutes in, a deep and dominating cola note showed up for me and hung around for about another 30 minutes. Great stuff. I thought about decanting but this made me glad I didn't. Some sort of pie filling note showed up as well that was not so much syrupy, like a traditional pie filling note is, but more like a faint viscosity mixed with fruit.

Still some gracefully fading acidity here that retained its balance to the last drop of the two hour meal. Could easily have drunk another bottle. The finish was medium to short, going away a tad quickly only to kick back up a few seconds later and show some nice heat while continuing to linger for longer than expected.

The 2006 continues to impress us and should drink well enough for another three years or so.

Pairing: 90 Nothing wrong with that

Great with the cherry-rosewater jam, made to pair with the rose petal note we found specifically in the Ponzi on previous occasions. We put it on the chicken and on the bread and it was consistently the star. The cinnamon and sumac on the chicken with the jam and the wine was some great stuff.

Not good with the mâche, making us a little too aware that we were eating greens, and not in a good way. Surprisingly not terrible with the funky Explorateur.

Mostly though, it was the constant changes and constant surprises that drew this pairing out of the uninspired realm and into a nice, unexpectedly good little meal.

It never quite got into the "great" realm. I can't say that Ponzi would ever get there. It's not a wine that ever approaches knock-your-socks-off spectacular. We like it because it's shocking how comfortable Ponzi is in its own skin, never aspiring to be something it's not, always delivering what it promises on the first sip, evolving gracefully and bordering on elegant. There's an integrity about it, I guess, and that's what keeps us coming back.

The meal without the wine would have been fine and good. With the wine, it was utterly delicious.

#5 - Wine Can Chicken & '96 Heredia White

If you haven't tried a R. López de Heredia wine, do so.

It's the benchmark for old-style Rioja. The winery only releases their wines when they think they're ready to drink so they typically don't hit the market until ten years after the vintage. Just three years ago, they finally released their 1981 Bosconia red. It's what they do.

Their reds are easily in the top three of our favorite wines and the whites aren't too far behind.

About a year ago, we got our hands on three of their '78 Heredia Bosconias at a ridiculously cheap price and I can still remember every sip. All dried cherry, liquid mushroom and dust that dramatically changed every 15 minutes. Great stuff.

Their whites are made from the Viura grape (Macabeo by another name) and are all honey and nuts with the fruit playing second fiddle (dried pear, dried apple?). Dry with medium to low acidity. Kinda like sherry. Reminiscent of a Savennières in a lot of ways in that both are unlike any other white wine you've ever had. They're both wonderfully perplexing in a pretty great way.

Food: Wine Can Chicken with Saffron Risotto

Our third wine can chicken in three weeks because it's delicious. Honey and Rosemary jam glaze served on mâche with saffron risotto.

The glaze was more subtle this time, which was probably a good thing with the wine. Best of the three WCCs so far.

Saffron risotto was an ideal match with the wine.

Wine: 1996 Robert López de Heredia Viña Gravonia - $23 Wine Discount Center

It's cheap, delicious and, if you haven't had it, unlike anything you've ever had.

Like I said, Heredia is what old-style Rioja is all about. As Spain gravitated toward bigger wines with more extracted fruit to satisfy the world market, Heredia held firm to its roots. They've been making the same style wine since its inception and the Spanish wine world is just now starting to come back to the Heredia style. Or at least to the point of understanding and respecting the virtues of it.

Eric Asimov of the New York Times Pour Blog can tell the story better than I can.

Some info:

The single vineyards:

Tondonia - predominantly red - in the Burgundy style, softer, lighter - some white in a tiny corner

Bosconia - red - tend to be a bit bigger, more fruit forward

The bottle shape was a mixup at the winery years ago, according to Asimov. They wanted Tondonia in Burgundy bottles and Bosconia in Bordeaux, someone screwed it up and they just stuck with it.

Gravonia - vineyard, white wine

Crianza - a wine that has spent one year in oak barrels

Reserva - a wine that has been aged for two years, one of which has to be in oak

Gran Reserva - a wine aged two years in oak and three years in the bottle

Pairing: Always good with Spanish-style white meat, spectacular with anything saffron

For the first time, it took a bit for the dust to blow off on this wine. Five minutes maybe. After it did, all the honey and nuts came through. Fruit was a little more dried than the last time we had this. As with most good Spanish wine, it pairs perfectly with any food Spanish-influenced.

The saffron risotto pairing was perfect, just sublime. The chicken was right behind it. Mrs. Ney found an explosive mulchy note that kicked up with the oil-cured black olives spread over the top and in the risotto.

It seems that, quite possibly, the '96 might be winding down. Something almost tobacco-y about it. Seemed to lose some of the structure it previously had and it was a tad hollow on its own. Still worth every minute and the changes were barely perceptible but it seemed to be closing up to me. Better than 95% of the white wine out there, though, in my world.

1999s are still out there at the same cheap price.

#37 - Wine Can Chicken, Tomato Salad & Arugula With '06 Mas De Maha

Couldn't have changed in just two months, right?

Couldn't have...?

We returned to Wine Can Chicken last night. With the Mediterranean feel of the meal, something Rhône-ish seemed fitting and we weren't in the mood for an actual Rhône.

Food: Wine can chicken with tomato salad/arugula and baguette with butter

No glaze this time. Chicken was rubbed in salt, pepper, copious amounts of cumin and baking soda, left in the refrigerator overnight. Glaze was put on the side in an attempt to see if the skin will crust up better.

Boy did it. Salty, crispy goodness. Best skin so far. Might have missed the molasses quality that comes with the glaze a wee bit, but that was made up for by the utter crispiness of the skin. I can see us switching back and forth between glaze and no glaze in the future.

Juicy, more simple roast chicken without the glaze.

We had the same tomato salad with this wine just two months ago. Cherry tomatoes, parsley, mint, red onion, pomegranate molasses, pomegranate seeds, thyme, lemon juice, peppers, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper - made and allowed to sit and marinate in itself. It's Turkish.

Exploding, bright, acidic salad without washing out your mouth with an acid bath. I could eat this concoction three times a week and never get sick of it.

Solid, solid meal.

Wine: 2006 Villa Creek Mas de Maha ($22 Binny's)

We're getting to the point here at Food With Wine where we can do real comparisons with wine and different food pairings. That's been the intent. Copious notes that don't rely on my brain. 100 pairings is the goal and then we'll reevaluate its utility.

Last time we drank the Mas de Maha, we had it with hanger steak, plantains and the same tomato salad and loved every second of it.

This is maybe the fifth time we've had the Mas de Maha and the consensus has been that it pairs perfectly with Cuban-influenced food. It seems unlikely that the Mas de Maha has changed in two months, but the price did mysteriously drop from $31 to $22 at Binny's. Did something change? The result last night makes me wonder.

What made this wine great was the tempranillo in the blend (60% tempranillo, 20% grenache, 20% mourvèdre). The cherry notes and the lifting quality of the grape brought a lightness and brightness to the wine while still retaining a nice heft. It could have been the food, but that seemed to fall last night.

Used to be a bit of tobacco and herb nose, with plum and cherry fruit on the palate. Never tannic, though. And that makes me think this might be changing rather quickly. Where the fruit was always concentrated, you could distinguish between the fruits and there was a lightness that seemed to defy what you were tasting. Last night was gobs of raspberry pie filling and some black pepper, like the grenache is starting to overtake the tempranillo, and it lost some of that lightness.

Still good stuff, just not what it used to be.

I never found a drinking window for this wine on the internet, usually meaning it's a drink early and often wine. But that big a difference in two months? I doubt this matters, but last night's came from the $22 batch while the one two months ago came from the $31 batch. Hmm.

With a few bottles left, we might relegate it to a meal we know works in an attempt to extend its pairing life - Cuban or Latin food.

Pairing: Perfectly good, just not what we were expecting

Even after saying all this, I liked the pairing.

Everything worked just fine, helping the chicken in small ways and standing up to the tomato salad.

We've had other offerings from Villa Creek and they came off a bit syrupy for my taste. The Mas de Maha never did. Last night, it kinda had that.

Mas de Maha = Cuban food, particularly with plantains and red meat fat from this point out.

#50 - Wine Can Chicken & Saffron Risotto With '89 Heredia Tondonia White

Made it to 50!

Ever had nuts, honey, pear and cantaloupe mixed with hairspray and gasoline?

We have...last night.

Food: Wine can chicken, saffron/pistachio risotto and Brussels Sprouts with bacon

First, saffron/pistachio risotto is in the top 20 of food-type concoctions on the planet. Mrs. Ney has started to put a red chili pepper in with the chicken broth (used to make the risotto), giving a hint of spice that made it even better.

Same wine can chicken preparation as last time. No glaze. Salt and pepper rubbed all over the chicken and left, standing up, in the refrigerator for 24 hours, making the skin quite crispy with a great rustic color. No more glaze. This is good stuff.

Brussels sprouts done in bacon fat with bacon pieces (and a little parmesan?).

Tasted Spanish-influenced with the saffron and almost Californian with the pistachios, Brussels sprouts and freshness.

Wine: 1989 López de Heredia Viña Tondonia Reserva Blanco ($40 - ?)

Aged six years in barrel, four more in bottle before release, 90% Viura, 10% Malvasia.

DEEP gold in the glass, much deeper than any Heredia I've seen. Very little nose. On the palate, VERY dry, nearly bone-dry if it weren't for an almost dessert-like feel in the mouth (had an exceedingly cheap dessert wine - Haut Sarthes semillon - after the meal and it was lighter). Very viscous. A touch of fruit throughout, I got pear, Mrs. Ney got cantaloupe. Oodles of liquified almond and a definite oxidized element. Touch of salt and overall, almost sherry-like.

The finish was a lot of hairspray and gasoline. Unpleasantly so? Only a little. But it threw it out of whack a bit for me. Heredia whites have that alcohol/almost motor oil touch and it usually makes for a spectacular experience when it plays nice with the fruit, nut and dust, but...it was a tad disjointed.

With what I know about aging wines hitting their end, which isn't a lot, I think we may have missed the window here, at least with this particular bottle. It was a complex wine, it was an interesting wine, but it wasn't a harmonious wine. It changed over the course of the meal, but never really stretched its legs.

On the whole, it was better than 85% of the white choices in the house, but I kept thinking about that other 15%. With that said, I've read on the interwebs about Heredia whites closing down for a period only to blossom again in a few years later. Because it's Heredia, we'll buy a couple more and revisit in five and ten years.

Pairing: Merely just fine

We've had this meal with Heredia Gravonia (the new-ish (25 years?), exclusively white vineyard) before and know it works. Different world with the Tondonia for sure, but it didn't have that transcendence we usually get. It fell immediately to trying to figure out the wine instead of enjoying the pairing and all its layers.

Flecks of loveliness with risotto and worked nicely enough with the chicken. No clashes anywhere. Just never great.

But...I'm intrigued enough by the '89 to check out more older Heredia whites, especially given they're still reasonably priced. That includes the '89 again as I'm beginning to be sure as I write this that we simply had a slightly off bottle. All the elements just weren't kicking around, trying to play with each other.

#78 - Moroccan Chicken & Modified Quinoa With '07 Savennières

A lot of screaming came from the kitchen last night.

The chicken fell over four times in the oven, the quinoa didn't fluff up and a general sense of frustration from all angles in Mrs. Ney's cooking world oozed from the kitchen.

Throw that on top of the first 90 degree day and it wasn't fun for her.

The result, though, had none of that frustration. It was good eats.

Eric Asimov did a Savennières tasting report just two days ago in the New York Times, which prompted the Moroccan direction of last night's meal to go with the wine, and we had a Savennières that is just adored by our favorite wine person at WDC. Mr. Asimov steered us wrong on this one, though. Not a pairing we would do again.

But Savennières...you're weird and mysteriously lovely. And that's why we're starting to love you. You're the Polish Poster Shop of wine.

Food: Moroccan-spiced wine can chicken with modified quinoa, mâche and baguette

Honey, bee pollen, lemon, garlic and wine in a can and shoved up the rump of the chicken. Rubbed with paprika and cumin and roasted. Turned out magically delicious. Good chicken for a hot day.

A sauce on the side made from a spoonful of tahini, chicken stock, lemon thyme and wine from the wine can. Goopy good.

After the quinoa didn't fluff up, Mrs. Ney improvised by adding wild rice to the golden raisin, walnut, parsley, shallots, lemon juice and olive oil mixture. Not only was it salvaged but became something quite good.

A Moroccan-influenced, Pan-Arab meal was the intention and the result. The chicken brought the right hint of spice along with crispy skin and the tahini sauce, especially drizzled over the mâche at the end of the meal, served as a solid accompaniment to everything. We liked the plate of food and were happy.

Baguette and butter rounded everything out and, unfortunately, was the item that worked best with the wine.

Wine: 2007 Mathieu Tijou Croix Picot Chateau de l'Eperonniere Savennières ($24 - WDC)

Grape: 100% Chenin Blanc

Vintage: 90 Drink or hold, A warm, dry September helped save the vintage for Chenin Blanc

Four-hour decant on recommendation from our favorite wine person at WDC. Darker gold in the glass. Soft, closed nose. On the palate, anything that resembles honey and the honey-making process showed up. Honey, beeswax, bee pollen, you get it with a hint of cinnamon pear, especially as it came closer to room temperature. Not big. A bit of wax and dry, dry, dry. An oily texture without the oil note and the right amount of alcohol that brought about a nice, slow burn on the finish. Good length, not too long, but beautiful nonetheless with a light honeyed oil coating everything on the way down.

This is maybe our eighth Savennières and they keep getting more interesting with each passing bottle. Chenin blanc, you win. You're my favorite white grape with splashes of viura mixed in.

A pretty, seamless wine by itself. Not so much with the food.

Pairing: 84 It broke up with the food and didn't enhance the overall meal

This wasn't a big, burly Savennières. It was missing that overarching nuttiness that comes with the bigger ones. With the Moroccan chicken, it turned slightly bitter and broke up a bit, throwing all the honeyed notes to the front of the line and leaving a hint of bitterness on the mid-palate while leaving the food to fall a bit flat.

Not much better with the quinoa-rice salad but pretty spectacular with the baguette and butter. And that's unfortunate. The Mathieu Tijou is a borderline great wine that's light on its feet while at the same time bringing the goods.

Moroccan-inspired spice and preparation is not this wine's bag, though. Even with the copious amounts of bee-honey foodstuffs added to help it along. With the baguette and butter performing the best, something lighter and more subtle would have served it much better.

#124 - TK Chicken, Hummus & Kumatoes With '07 Guiberteau Saumur Blanc

Here's a $58 meal that surpassed (by a HUGE margin) a recent $300 meal out in the world.

Chicken = $11

Hummus from Semiramis = $10

Kumatoes = $4

Pea shoots and Pomegrante = $4

Wine = $29

The entire meal last night, beginning to end, wine and all, cost the same as the bottle of the decent little albariño drank last week at a restaurant that I could have bought at Binny's for $22.

Far be it for me to discourage dining out at the new and hip. I work in the industry. But doing the math on occasion and taking the time to research food with wine pairings makes it hardly an argument.

Also, with Joe Bastianich now telling us that the proper restaurant business model demands a wine mark-up of FOUR TIMES, the "fabulous" tax on dining out continues to go up.

Food: Thomas Keller Chicken, Hummus and Pita and a Kumato-Pea Shoot Salad

Thomas Keller chicken. Taken out a little earlier than usual to experiment with resting temps and levels of juiciness. Worked. Only ate the leg and thigh and left the breast for lunch sandwiches due to the ton of food on the (coffee) table. Great skin again and moist meat ("giggity"). There's chicken. There's wine can chicken. And then there's TK chicken.

Two orders of hummus from Semiramis because their hummus and the wine drank with this meal in April was Devin Hester on kick returns. "You are ridiculous!" The rest of the pairing in April at Semiramis was much like the rest of the Bears (ugh - but I'm a Browns fan so...) but the hummus and Saumur pairing shocked us. It's great hummus.

Kumatoes (brown tomato hybrid) dressed with olive oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. It's a new tomato creation with a higher sugar content that taste almost meaty, plummy and like a drizzle of balsamic was slapped on them. Still the great tomato acid but darker and magically delicious. Can't recommend them more highly. Great stuff.

Pea shoot and pomegranate seeds with the kumatoes.

The meal had everything for about $15 a person. Hate to beat a dead horse here, but that got us about six bites of food each last week.

Wine: 2007 Domaine Guiberteau Saumur Blanc ($29 - Red & White)

Tough one to find on a consistent basis. Red & White usually has it. Cellar Rat as well, IIRC. Flickinger Wines in the South Loop has many of the single-vineyard offerings from Domaine Guiberteau. Flickinger does a spectacular job. Get to know it. Scored a 2005 Sanguis Bossman there last year for $50 (rare then and now and no cheaper than $70 elsewhere).

Dried honey and chalk on the nose. Half-stewed pears on the palate with a load of beeswax-honey surrounding it on the palate. Medium depth on the finish with something that resembled plum (?) on the way down with a graceful acidity. Little spikes of apple, citrus and nuts here and there that may not have been consistent or focused but lovely in the way Chenin Blanc can surprise.

And I guess that's the rub. Chenin Blanc continues to be the white grape that defines elegant for us. It's just so gorgeous in nearly every form. Get out of the bargain offerings that tend to be inconsistent and unremarkable, spent just a few dollars more (mediocre movie), and you consistently wander into the realm of silk freakin' magic.

Domaine Guiberteau practices natural wine-making in all its glory, letting much of their wine rest of its lees and...heck...just go here because WickerParker was there.

Pairing: 94 Fit like a glove

Medium depth all over the place. In the food and in the wine as both, instead of offering little jumps of goodness in that medium depth range, exploring every nook and cranny of what a medium depth meal can bring. Tasted purposeful.

Best with just a bite of pita, but the hummus and pita followed right behind. The wine turned the hummus into something much more than its previous self, becoming hummus with a (pea)nutty tone and drawing out more of the nuttiness in the wine.

Salty skin on the chicken turned the wine into a minerally-yeasty pear-honey wonder and played beautifully with the darker meat.

Held up admirably with the kumatoes but lost its way with the pea shoots, bringing out too much unwelcome lime and a short finish.

The entire meal hopped and jumped, changed and surprised, all within an entirely beautiful tight box ("giggity"). Everything become more heightened and vivid versions of themselves, seeming made for each other with flavors stacked upon flavors stacked upon flavors.

$58. Beat that at even a low-cost, quality restaurant and you win my undying affection.

#101 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Burgundian Cheese with a Burgundian White

Now over 100 posts!

Never would have guessed. It's served us well as a reference.

Thomas Keller chicken seemed appropriate after a Thomas Keller Ad Hoc visit four days before. He was at Ad Hoc the night we were there, sitting next to a guy who had the four-course Memphis BBQ dinner at 5pm and came back for it again at 9pm. Gotta say, it was that good. I'd do it.

And Burgundy was something we were going to delve deeper into instead of the recent surface play after we exhausted our love for other regions. I just never would have thought it would start with white Burgundy. But it has. And we love it.

We love Pinot Noir and have thought in the past that Chardonnay can rot on the vine (wine humor and recycled at that!) for all we cared. But something happened with the Viré Clessé from last month.

A place has been found for Chardonnay in our world rather quickly and nearly completely. So the retort from some was true. We just didn't have a good one. I expect our prejudice for California Chardonnay to linger for years but white Burgundy, welcome to our world. You're good stuff.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with mâche and parsley salad and Burgundian cheese and baguette

It was a near identical match to the Chardonnay tasting last month. Same chicken, this time with a more dark chicken and a slightly higher salt level and definitely higher pepper level. Juicy with great skin with better dark meat than the breast this time. It's the best chicken on the planet. Here's the recipe.

The Burgundian cheese, delice de Bourgogne, nearly matched the chicken. Like brie without the brie-ness. Intensely creamy without choking you with its creaminess and just enough funkiness that knows when to go away. Served with LaBriola baguette. No baguette is better and it's not every close. If you don't agree, put 'em up, sport.

Mrs. Ney wasn't thrilled about the prospect of chicken. She craved it a few days before but wasn't as she was making it. But like tuna Niçoise, fish tacos, bahn mi and scores of other meals, it always turns into something delicious, absolutely wanted and always a meal that wildly exceeds every expectation. It was another "Hot Mother Damn, this is good!"

And the wine certainly helped.

Wine: 2006 Jean-Phillipe Fichet Auxey Duresses ($45 - Randolph Wine Cellars)

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Appellation: Auxey Duresses, just west of Meursault and seemingly carved out of the Hautes-Côtes de Beaune hillside

Vintage (WS): 91 - Drink or hold - Best are pure, elegant and balanced, with plenty of mineral character

the Auxey Duresses AOC has only been around since 1970. Before that, grapes grown there sold under the Meursault and Volnay appellation labels and some mixed Villages labels. Quality and distinction has steadily increased and vineyards are using the Auxey Duresses name on the bottle more frequently.

Jean-Phillipe Fichet is a strict winemaker using slow growing and mostly organic techniques, even studying the micro-climates of micro-climates to find the true expression of the grape from the true expression of the land. He has vines all over Burgundy. This is his Auxey Duresses vines.

Tons of smoky pear on the palate with a hint of maybe (baked?) apple and chockablock with a chalky minerality on the mid-palate. In fact, that's all that was on the mid-palate. Unique, balanced and open, it just sung and was worth every bit of the $45 price tag. Beautifully subdued touch of underlying butter that left at the right time for the minerality to transition in. Nice finish with more smoky pear perking up. Layered and wonderful. More lively and refreshing than the Domaine de Roally with less funk. Two different styles, two pretty great wines.

We'll be following Mr. Fichet after this one.

Pairing: 94 Good chicken and good Chardonnay = Yes, please!

We've messed around with other whites with wine can chicken and some worked, some fell flat and many were as fair-to-middling as it gets, if pleasant enough to have around.

Many times, those average ones were wines we liked already and simply wanted to drink. They turned out fine enough, mostly because we already liked the wine.

But as a roast chicken pairing, I would venture to guess that white Burgundy wins out 80% of the time from here on out.

Probably best with the cheese and bread as the subtle funkiness in the cheese danced with the butter and minerality of the wine. Seemed made for each other and actually were. Rarely can you go wrong when you stay within the same region for food and wine. It's what they do and why they do it.

But the chicken with the wine was a close second, especially with the pepper. There was a point very early in the meal when we felt like we had to start rationing the wine as we kept grabbing for the glass after every bite. It was that good together. We constantly wanted to get that taste in our mouth back.

#133 - Two Cheap Meals With Two Bargain Wines

'99 Prager Smaragd Steinreigl's done!

Smelled like rotten milk left in dumpster juice last night. Or wet wool blankets that someone forgot about in the basement for 87 years. Didn't taste much better either.

Sad. Our first post here was describing that wine with Wine Can Chicken.

A sick Mrs. Ney meant no family visit for Thanksgiving.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with mustard asparagus, herb cheese, La Quercia prosciutto and Seeduction bread

Quick and easy meal, nothing out of the ordinary compared to other Thomas Keller chicken meals with a few notes.

$8 Whole Foods non-organic chicken isn't as good as $14 Trader Joe's organic chicken. We learned that. In an attempt to keep the meal cheap, that's what we got - a chicken that tasted cheap. If you told me a few years ago that I'd have strong opinions about chicken, I'd have said you be crazy, fool. We got sum opinions. Tasted boring and a tad chemical-y. Edible, just dull, dull, dull.

But...La Quercia and Seeduction bread can lift any meal out of the world of cheap and dull to something resembling goodness. Even cheap $5 herb cheese from Whole Foods has its complimentary and "good creamy quality" merits. Mustard asparagus = always good.

We counted our blessings on what we didn't experience yesterday, like the rest of the Prager...and other things.

Wine: 2006 Jean-Philippe Fichet Bourgogne Blanc Vieilles Vignes ($24 - WDC)

Got $100, don't know anything about white Burgundy and want to?

Go buy three bottles of anything by Jean-Philippe Fichet. The guy makes delicious wine from plots straddling the big names/plots and pumps out wines with balance, beauty and none of the boring butteriness that comes from chardonnay in the same price range.

Just tons of mineral character that makes you want tons more.

We recently had the 2005 and 2006 Auxey Duresses from Fichet, both with TK chicken and both were sublime. This one was less so, showing more typical character of solid white Burgundy but never really getting out of that box. Pineapple and white peach notes with a touch of cream that never overtook a pronounced and tasty minerality at its core. Structured and balanced with nice acidity. Tasted proper but never stretched its legs to show anything greatly distinct. Tasted more "beautifully representative" than particularly interesting. That's okay, though. At $24, we never felt cheated, but it's one of those situations where for $10 more, going up a notch would yield something twice as good from Fichet.

Pairing: 86 A meal that again informed us on exactly what we want

Like better quality chicken and a white Burgundy that's maybe a notch up the pole.

That said, I liked this wine. It's like buying a 10 year-old used Honda. Might not be shiny, sparkly, new, pretty or full of personality, but it's a Honda, damn it. It's gonna run just fine.

Best with the bread and cheese, bringing out some delicious Burgundy funk, itself with the chicken and not so great at all with the mustard asparagus. Which was expected. That's what the Prager was for. But mustard asparagus with rotten milk/old wet wool blankets isn't good in anybody's world.

A quick note: Wednesday night's meal needed cheap wine with a meatloaf and roasted potato meal as Mrs. Ney was just starting to get sick. Served with a bottle of 2007 Chateau Beauchêne Premier Terrior ($15 - Binny's), a wine highly recommended on a Chicago Frenchman's blog that chronicles French food and wine in the Chicago area. You go check out that blog now. Go! Get! It's good stuff - informative, exhaustive and downright interesting.

A lot to like with this wine. Black tea and black cherry intermingle with nice earth. Good minimum quality for the price that tasted like vacation in France where the table wine turns out to be something that defines the meal. The Domaine Des Tours Vaucluse in the same basic price range beats it but everyone's on that bandwagon, making it difficult to reliably find.

Tasted rather ordinary with the veal, beef and pork meatloaf (a recipe that will end your search for a good meatloaf, BTW) but turned into something that tasted well above $15 price tag with the rosemary potatoes, showing great structure and cherry and tea notes that sparkled and changed rather beautifully.

Not too shabby. Not too shabby at all. (Pairing Score: 87)

#83 - Thomas Keller Chicken, Mâche & Cheese With Two Chardonnays

We have a few prejudices that we're more than willing to let linger as we find our wine feet.

Mostly, it's "screw Cabernet and Chardonnay". We just don't enjoy their guts as much as other wines. We know good Cabernet and Chardonnay are good and have had a few good ones. And we know we'll eventually get to them more at length. But we also know that "good" costs money, especially with those two grapes.

With both of us having worked in the restaurant business/wine retail-ish world for so long, we've had tons of overpriced and bad Cab and Chard. They can wait while we spend our money getting into the nuances of wines and regions that we truly enjoy. We've opened up to virtually every style of wine. These two linger as a judgment though and we have no impulse to mess around trying to find bargains of two grapes we don't care about.

But, last night, threw a wrench into the works a bit. And both of us thought that might happen.

A wine writer for the now-defunct New York Sun quoted Henry James when discussing the Királyudvar Sec, a glorious wine that we've had on multiple occasions since November and a wine we almost switched to last night:

In a rare moment of concision, the novelist and critic Henry James observed, "There are two kinds of taste, the taste for emotions of surprise, and the taste for emotions of recognition."

We seek out surprise in wines. But, for us, the impulse hasn't been there to be surprised by Cabernet and Chardonnay.

Champagne has been recently scratched off the "don't freakin' care about" list. I can't believe I'm writing this but Chardonnay...you're now off the list. Cabernet...(and Malbec and Tannat and Zweigelt...OH!...and Pinot Grigio, something that's well ahead of Cabernet in our 'screw you' world)...you are the only ones really left.

Thanks to what might have been the perfect recipe to get into Chardonnay, the response to last night's meal was, "Why was THAT so good?!"

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with pea shoots, mâche with avocado vinaigrette and baguette with Burgundian cheese and Irish butter

Here's the recipe. Get to know it because it's stupid good. Better than Wine Can Chicken, five words I thought I'd never say, and easier to prepare.

No one element of the chicken made it delicious. It was the total product. Simply prepared and tasted exactly like what people mean when they extol the virtues of simplicity with an almost brightness in its earthy goodness. It's the new "Winner Winner" in Chicken Dinner.

The Burgundian cheese, delice de Bourgogne, nearly matched the chicken. Like brie without the brie-ness. Intensely creamy without choking you with its creaminess and just enough funkiness that knows when to go away. Served with LaBriola baguette. No baguette is better and it's not every close.

Mâche with an avocado vinaigrette made with crappy, store-bought guacamole that was used previously for a quickly whipped-together taco lunch a few days earlier. Just extra virgin oil, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Complimented the chicken beautifully and served to help the already present brightness in the chicken along. Pea shoots brought something more crunchy and became the bridge between the mâche and the chicken.

We could have served any of our favorite wines with this meal and would have loved it.

But it's Try New Things Summer.

Wine: 2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé ($20 - WDC) and 2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard ($17 -WDC)

2007 Domaine de Roally Viré Clessé

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

AOC: Viré Clessé in the Mâconnais subregion of Burgundy

Vintage (WS): 92 Precise, pure and elegant, with lively structures if harvested late; at worst unripe if picked early

2008 Craggy Range Chardonnay Kidnapper's Vineyard

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

Region: Hawkes Bay

We sampled both wines before the meal and the Burgundy was the undisputed winner right out of the bottle. More golden yellow than the New Zealand wine, which had a crisp green in the glass, the Domaine de Roally had a huge barnyard funkiness to it that was deliciously weird. A bit of oak and butter but the hay and something that was almost lavender (without the overt lavender quality) was unique and good. Initially, the Craggy Range was all buttered toast, the exact quality that we don't enjoy at all about Chardonnay, with a wee hint of pear.

Things changed over the course of the meal though. The Craggy Range quickly showed more nuance with more expressive pear and hints of lime and a clean, refreshing acidity with the excessively buttered notes falling into the background. Almost delicate with even some limestone notes. Mrs. Ney put it perfectly. Blind, it could have been an enjoyable California Sauvignon Blanc.

Very much less acidic and more rich, the Domaine de Roally evolved into buttered baked fruits with the barnyard quality integrating more into the fruit profile and tons of minerals. A better, more interesting wine than the Craggy Range with an elegant coating of the throat as it went down.

Comparing both styles seemed apt given our aversion to the grape and we benefitted from it. It was a classic Old World/New World thing with two great examples of both. And both at or under $20.

Just really enjoyable and "surprised" the heck out of it.

Pairing: 94 As a total meal, that's the score but it's tough to score something like this

Nothing went off the rails but some things were better with a specific wine. And some things were the definition of perfect.

Eating the delice de Bourgogne and baguette with the Domaine de Roally would turn anyone skeptical of what wine does with food and what the French unequivocally get right with food and wine in about two seconds. Pure silk and made us pause.

The mâche and avocado vinaigrette with the Craggy Range did nearly as well. The lime and mineral notes in the wine exploded and together, they both sang.

The chicken played right down the middle, serving both wines well and we alternated back and forth, picking up what we wanted, when we wanted it at each particular time. Mostly, it was the nice backbone of minerality in different forms in both wines that made the chicken pairing (particularly with the nicely salted skin) work so well. Oh, and we slathered butter on the chicken because Thomas Keller told us to. You don't question Thomas Keller. Delicious with the Domaine de Roally.

I'm not going to say we going to rush out and buy up as many Chardonnays as we can as soon as possible. But in our world, it's found a small niche, made that way by what might have been the perfect meal to make that happen.

A quick note. Went to Mado Tuesday for another goshdarn good meal. Appetizer menu was meat platter of chicken liver paté, testa and copa, roasted carrots in ras el hanout goat cheese and cumin honey, farm fresh egg on toasted cornbread, citrus-cured lake perch, and asparagus and peas with Parmigiano-Reggiano. Entrees were spaghetti with spring onion, chilies and bread crumbs and eggs in purgatory, a sort of Sicilian green olive, spiced tomato and breadcrumb stew. We were happy and full.

Eaten with the 2007 Paul Hobbs Pinot Noir Ulises Valdez Vineyard ($75 - Binny's) and the 1999 Prager Riesling Smaragd Steinreigl ($16 - WDC). The Prager has been discussed here numerous times. It's almost done and the degree in which it's leaped toward its death was even more intensified since the last time we had it. All dried flowers and apricots with only a hint of sugar. Got better as it opened up. We've enjoyed every second of watching this one go. The Paul Hobbs, bought when I was in a spendy mood and apparently more open to overpriced California offerings, didn't come close to living up to its price tag however. Very Californian with that syrupy quality and pleasant enough fruit and decent balance. If I spent $30 on it, I would have thought it was a fine enough wine, even good. At $75, I was a bit pissy about it.

The Reason

No reason, really.

Mostly, we at the Ney household have tried a wine and food log probably five times. Never stuck. So this is an exercise attempting to catalogue things in an easily searchable format, something I can quickly whip out in the morning after waking up while last night's meal is still fresh in the melon.

I'm 37, bald as all get out, wait tables and really like wine.

I'm under no illusion that anybody else will care but, if you happen to, well, like the structure of the NBA playoffs, everyone's a winner!

Some background. I'm nowhere close to an expert. I've been around wine in the restaurant business, watching people chew, for 13 years now but I only became what would be considered seriously into it five years ago. Sure, I know my grapes, where they're from, what I like, what I tolerate and what I pretty much hate.

There's a saying in golf that applies. If you're a bogey golfer, you're better than 85% of the golfers out there. But that doesn't mean you're a good golfer. Everything's relative. When it comes to knowing wine, I would conservatively say that I merely have a pretty solid baseline.

This will be an attempt to actually track a gloriously wonderful process and joy: Food and wine. What worked. What didn't. What could have worked if.... And what had no chance in hell of working ever in the history of history.

I can't tell you my favorite wine. Probably depends on the food. Plus, I don't think I can say with any degree of certainty what that one bottle is. Still working on that.

Right now, overall, it trends toward French. Loire with a Chenin Blanc bent, Right Bank Bordeaux but...Spanish always, Portuguese Douro table wine (Quinta do Vale Meao, still chasing the 2007 Duorum Reserva), Oregon Pinot Noir (Ponzi, Ken Wright) and a new jag that we're only now discovering is quasi-cult California Syrah (Sanguis).

So...we'll see. Might be fun. Who knows? I can learn, pass it along, maybe you'll be compelled and you can teach me things.

In it's basic form, wine is good. And good wine is freakin' transcendent!

Why not write about it?

First up: Wine Can Chicken! with mâche and baguette with a 1999 Prager Smaragd Steinreigl Riesling.

Wine Can Chicken is quickly becoming a staple in the Ney household. Because it's delicious. All that gobbledygook after Prager I knew for about two weeks two years ago and promptly forgot the meanings behind it. All I remember is that it's an Austrian Riesling in the dry style and we got a great deal on it at Wine Discount Center on Elston for $15.99 a bottle.

First report tomorrow.

#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.

#106 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Burgundian Cheese With Varnier-Fanniere Champagne

Thomas Keller Chicken again!

Because it's good.

And it's been two weeks!

It's what 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.

Thomas Keller chicken though, transcends normal, everyday chicken. It's not just chicken. It's not even Wine Can Chicken. It's some sort of Super Chicken.

Food: Thomas Keller Chicken with Burgundian cheese and a mâche and lemon verbena salad

Virtually a carbon copy of the meal two weeks ago with a few exceptions.

Delicious chicken again. Softer, more herbal skin and the thigh won the tasty chicken battle for the second straight chicken dinner. Mouthwateringly juicy that amped up the very essence of chicken in the lining of my cheeks.

Delice de Bourgogne cheese with baguette again. It's my current favorite cheese. Perfect amount of funkiness that hangs around just long enough without staying too long at the party.

One big difference was lemon verbena instead of parsley in the mâche mix. Brought a citrus element to the plate of course, but took the cleansing-of-the-palate salad utility one step further and brought a contrasting element to the food. Doesn't necessarily brighten things up but diversified things a bit.

I implore you. Try Thomas Keller's Bouchon chicken and drink a good French white with it. It's so easy to make and the payoff is something quite over-the-top Great.

Wine: NV Varnier-Fanniere Champagne Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs Brüt ($29 - WDC)

100% Chardonnay. Disgorged in 2006. Very pale yellow in the glass. Yeast of old bread dough on the nose right away. Started out closed and DRY on the palate. Once the shock of how dry it was wore off and some food was added, the wine exploded with a solid-as-a-rock pear background fruit note with citrus notes dancing the foreground. Fine touch of yeast throughout that never turned too bready. Lively acid that played nice with everything and never demanded your attention and a very subtle almost heavily toasted almond note or dirt occasionally popped up - something dark or at least unexpectedly dark-ish that I couldn't quite put my finger on. Bone-dry in the best way.

A delicious Champagne that will be bought again.

Pairing: 94 An absolute surprise in every sense

I guess the biggest surprise was how well it fielded everything thrown at it. Best with the delice de Bourgogne with the yeasty-pear elements in the wine matching up brilliantly with the slight funk in the cheese. It was a Wow moment.

Not too shabby at all with the chicken. The herbs in the chicken accented the fruit in the Champagne, mixing and refreshing the mouth on a brutally hot and humid day. Fruit, succulent skin, herbal base and bubbles = Some great bites and drinks.

And just flat-out delicious with the lemon verbena.

Thomas Keller chicken might be spectacular with white Burgundy but neither of us wanted everything resembling butter in a wine when it was 90 degrees out and humid as *&%#.

With the Champagne, a wine that constantly changed and constantly surprised with the food, something that refreshed was called for.

And it did in spades.

#77 - Plantain Chicken & Saffron Risotto With Two Wines

Yesterday, we finally went to and I can recommend Big Star in Wicker Park, Paul Kahan's take on Mexican street food. The hipster quotient was a bit through the roof but the staff is wonderful.

But it didn't touch plantain chicken and saffron risotto with two of our favorite wines. Not. Even. Close.

It's an absolute shock to me that we hadn't had this meal since starting this blog. We took a bit of a hiatus since the discovery of wine can chicken.

Food: Plantain chicken with saffron risotto and spinach

Plantains mashed and wrapped with sandwich ham, then wrapped with chicken pounded flat, forming a sort of roulade in a way. The roulade-style concoction was then rubbed in rosemary, salt and pepper and then braised with an orange. Leftover-spillover goodness in the skillet was finished off with lemon juice to create a goopy sauce to drizzle over everything. Peri-peri sauce to put on the chicken.

Saffron risotto made with almonds, saffron and finished off with parmesan. Probably better with pistachios but we didn't mind one bit.

Raw spinach as a base and parsley all over the entire plate.

It's a Cuban-Spanish fusion that's definitely on the short list on 'last meal' type talk. I don't know what else I can say. It has everything you could ever want from a meal and has to be tasted to understand its perfection. Even gluten and dairy free, if that matters to you.

And it was glorious with the wine.

Wine: 1999 R. Lopez de Heredia Gravonia Blanco ($22 - Binny's) & 2005 Királyudvar Tokaji Sec ($22 - Berkeley Wine Co.)

I THINK...this was the first time we had the '99 Heredia. We've had plenty of the '96 and '98 but I don't remember the '99, specifically.

100% Viura. Pale gold in the glass. Grilled pineapple and honey on the nose that followed through on the palate. Compared to the '96 and even the '98, this one has much more viscosity to it - especially with the food - along with a smoked pear note. Still the unique nuttiness that defines Heredia whites and good, solid, wonderful acid. A glorious wine. More volatile than previous years as it changed constantly throughout the evening and with the food. A smoky olive oil hint was a constant with more lively, meaty fruit than previous years - the sort of fruit that had a smokier overtone but still jumped out of the glass and stayed bright enough. Can't say it's better than the '96 or even the '98, just different. I love you, Heredia. And it was so nice to revisit everything that you are. Available everywhere.

The Királyudvar showed just as well. 80% Furmint, 20% Hárslevelű. A much lighter yellow in the glass than the Heredia with citrus on the nose. It's been three months since we last had it and while it's changed a bit, the lively acidity still carries the day. While the fruit last time showed more orange and exotic fruits, this time it went more into the world of lemon verbena and maybe peach with only splashes of orange notes and a tad more sugar on the palate than I remember. It's in the dry style (the grapes in Tokaj are naturally sweet) but Mrs. Ney found a Fresca note that nailed it, like a hint of slightly sweet carbonation with a grapefruit peel note. This one's five years out now and is still going strong. Tough to find but stupid good.

(A side note here: Királyudvar's vineyards are run by Noel Pinguet, head winemaker at Domaine Hüet, home of the recently drunk and utterly wonderful 2005 Clos du Bourg Demi-Sec. Pinguet was given sole control of Hüet in 2002 when Gaston Hüet died, but in 2003 he sold off majority financial control to the Chinese-American financier Anthony Hwang, creator and owner of Királyudvar, and the famed Tokaji winemaker István Szepsy, who used to own Királvudvar's vineyards until 2006.)

That's two $22 wines. Both were equally great. If you don't like white wine, try these two. If after drinking them and you still don't like white wine, I can't help you.

Pairing: 95 Only a 95 because 95-100 should probably be left for the unknown. I'll know it when I have it.

Perfect is such an arbitrary word. But it's probably our time-tested favorite meal everywhere, anytime, on any temporal plane. It's the one we enjoy the most, especially with two of our favorite wines, which these are.

The Királyudvar was better with the plantain chicken and the Heredia and risotto might be the best pairing of wine and food I've ever had. It's in the least the benchmark I've used to compare. When I first had that pairing, I kinda understood what perfect food and wine pairings were for me.

In the end, the beautifully graceful acidity in both wines cut through any fat/starch in the plantain chicken/risotto just enough to be able to enjoy both the food and wine exactly for what they were with flavors in each matching up perfectly. Even peri-peri sauce, something with an intense chili-herb flavor, worked great with the wines.

Everything was topped off with Portuguese almond liqueur bought in Cleveland. Cheapest label you've ever seen and even had a bit of crap coated on the bottle when we bought it. I'm not going to say it's delicious. I'm going to say it's freakin' delicious! Wonderfully subtle with barely an alcohol hit. Creamy almonds without the cream. Just glides down the throat and was a great finish to a great meal. Crap, that's good. All of it.