#119 - Chicken Thighs And Skordalia With Two American Albariños

Two American albariños with Greek-style chicken and Turkish-inspired salad (on Polish plates with Austrian wine glasses all served on a $5 coffee table from Iowa. I can keep going...).

We accidentally went global because the soft flavors from the night before warranted it.

We wanted Flavors and we got it.

Food: Chicken thighs with skordalia and tomato salad

Chicken thighs simply roasted in the cast iron skillet and put over a big, mushy pile of skordalia.

A change-up from the previous preparation, this time using up the bread in the kitchen in place of potatoes. Almonds, bread, garlic, lemon, extra virgin olive oil and lemon juice blended into a purée that on first taste, I thought it was a modified hummus. Great garlic punch here with a smoothness and non-dairy creaminess that coated every inch of my mouth.

Chicken thighs that served more as an vehicle for the skordalia. Together, the skordalia dominated but that's exactly what we wanted.

The entire meal came down to the beautiful garlic hit and smoothness of the purée and the contrasting acid bath from the tomato salad.

I heart this tomato salad with every fiber of my being. Tastes like mowing the lawn on a 90 degree day and then drinking a tall glass of ice-cold water. Insanely fresh, this time done without the pomegranate seeds usually incorporated to pair up with red wine (usually Mas de Maha). Cherry tomatoes, oregano, parsley, mint, red onion, thyme, lemon juice, peppers, paprika, garlic, salt and pepper. Mixed and left to sit for a bit to marry. Wakes up every possible taste bud in your mouth and we need to have it more often.

It felt like getting back on the horse in many ways. After having some largely uninspired food in Portugal and slogging through post-vacation ennui, it was an entirely welcome food night.

And the wine helped.

Wine: 2008 Bonny Doon Ca' Del Solo Albariño ($18 - Randolph Wine Cellars) & 2008 Abacela Albariño ($18 - Binny's)

Ca' Del Solo from Monterey County in California. Abacela from the Umpqua Valley in southern Oregon.

Bonny Doon's an interesting story. Their vines were destroyed by Pierce's disease in 1994 and they took that as an opportunity to get out of the big production world and into small production, terroir-driven wines. Now, they grow a ton of Rhône varieties along with a flurry of boutiquey-style grapes.

This one is 75% albariño, 21% loureiro and 4% treixadura, all grapes primarily grown both in Galicia in Spain and Vinho Verde in Portugal. It's also biodynamically-grown.

Minerals dominate with a precursor to a banana creaminess. Refined and understated citrus notes with some grapefruit, touch of melon, flowers and maybe even grass that made it wander into a sauvignon blanc realm for a time. Crisp but not over-the-top with a nice underlying acid in balance with everything else. Jumped around, vacillating between the different fruit notes yet still retaining its base of cream/slight butter/hint of oil base. Got better as it came up in temperature.

Not bursting with personality but in a good way. Light. Would be a good afternoon drinker on its own. The price makes it difficult for that, though.

The 2008 Abacela seems to be falling apart but drank well enough to enjoy moments. Clunky limeade, some nice melon tones and flat club soda notes with a wacky acidic edge that blew right past quenching and settled into tart and unwieldy for sips. Hasn't seemingly aged well in a very short time but some elements present in the initial bottle that we loved of this one showed up to the party with a bowl of fresh citrus showing best very cold in the glass. When very young, the Abacela exhibits a quirky citrus-pear-apple-creamy nut-crispy goodness that demands we follow it and we do (and will).

Pairing: 87 Mixed, largely welcome bag with the food

As the Bonny Doon came up in temperature, it enhanced all the separate flavors in the skordalia and chicken quite nicely. Tasted more of everything. The Abacela also had its base hits with its lime-lemon notes blending right into the Greeky purée just fine at times.

The tomato salad was predictably a land mine, though. Served best with the Bonny Doon more as a basic food-wine accompaniment but it had the guts to hang with the acid in the tomatoes and keep the basic elements of itself, though it was kind of spectacular with a big oregano bite. The Acabela hollowed out, finishing with something that resembled inhaling a cleanser vapor.

The 2008 Abacela seems to be hanging on for dear life but still occasionally told some funny stories. The 2008 Ca' Del Solo reminded me of the Do Ferreiro in some ways. Nice, light, refined, tasty but not exactly what we want from albariño. All that said, though, we liked what happened last night.

It had Flavors with enough complexity and nuance in the wine to enjoy everything that was happening.

#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.

#117 - Duck Risotto With '07 Jiménez-Landi Sotorrondero

Take two on getting rid of bottles we're sick of looking at in the rack.

And last night was another case of the food vastly outshining the wine.

In the end, we were okay with that. Enough came through (just), nothing was necessarily bad, we weren't left wanting for the most part and things were pretty much in line.

But that's a ton of qualifiers.

After reading the recipe, something a tad larger/darker/rustic seemed to be the way to go. After tasting the food, something with more finesse (a good pinot noir, most likely) would have served us better.

Nothing bad, but nothing particularly inspiring.

Food: Duck risotto with pancetta and chorizo

Taken from The New Portuguese Table, a cookbook that so far seems to have more bold flavors than what we experienced recently in Portugal, what resulted was a dish dripping with suave, silky, subtle depth.

Main ingredients of duck legs, Spanish chorizo and La Quercia pancetta, modifying the duck breast and prosciutto recipe a bit. A sort of stew made with the various meats, white wine, orange juice and zest, onion, butter, parsley, olive oil, chicken stock and duck fat stewed together and then folded into the risotto as it was coming to a finish.

The risotto itself came out beautiful. Just the right amount of creamy starch oozing off of it with nothing turning gloppy. Seemed folded in at the right time, with the stew-like concoction tasting integrated into the risotto but keeping enough separation to taste like a complete dish instead of a risotto-flavored meal.

Both of us were shocked how light it came off. Substantial enough to be filling but light enough to feel clean and good. Loved it. Every bite.

An arugula salad to top it off and cerignola green olives on the side.

Wine: 2007 Jiménez-Landi Sotorrondero Méntrida ($31 - Red & White)

Grape: 85% Syrah and 15% Garnacha

Region: Castilla - La Mancha

Appellation: Méntrida

To plagiarize myself again, from #79 in May when we had the Jiménez-Landi estate bottling from two years previous with Spanish-style skirt steak with onion-potato gratin:

"Located smack in the middle of Spain near Madrid in the province of Toledo, Méntrida, unlike most Spanish regions, has a fair amount of cabernet, merlot and syrah being grown. The region was mostly known for mediocre rosés for years but a few wineries, Bodegas Jiménez-Landi being one of them, has created a great track record for making solid wines of late."

The estate bottling was a merlot/tempranillo/syrah blend and we probably missed its window. Some stewy notes on that one. Tasty enough though, as I recall.

This one, a more idiosyncratic blend for Spain in some ways with this much syrah, came out only slightly better.

1 1/2 hour decant. Before the decant, intense gamy notes on the nose. The house smelled like duck and that could have played a role but it smelled like some slow-roasted game was well on its way to be charred beyond recognition with a buttered and burnt toast note. Intense stuff.

On the palate, big smoky-sweet plummy notes with some coffee and toast, hibiscus tea and a hint of maybe old blueberry. A touch rough but it kept its structure throughout the meal. Minerally mid-palate with the initial fruit receding to the background and a blackberry note kicking up. Small tannic bite at the end that wasn't unpleasant.

Overall, just enjoyable enough. "Adequate" comes to mind when thinking about it but that's not necessarily damning it with faint praise. But we don't need more of it.

Pairing: 85 Mostly made me think of other options to pair with this type of food goodness

We weren't opening another bottle. This wine was just good enough.

But I wondered how so many different wine options would have played with this bowl o' goodness (pinot noir, Heredia red, grenache-heavy Rhône?).

Small enhancements though. The wine brought out the meaty, darker notes of the chorizo a touch more and if we had an olive, then ate the risotto and had a sip, the orange in the food jumped out a ton more.

But the pairing was more of a companion than an enhancement in the end. Nothing buried, nothing hurt, nothing overwhelmed.

No complaints, just not much of note really happened.

#116 - Tri-Tip And Saffron/Almond Potatoes With First Drop Two Percent

Shiraz in two forms made the table last night.

The first one was a bit of an old friend revisited, one that made us remember fondly our Australian shiraz love that had been put to bed a few years ago.

The second one was Jam Jar.

Given to me by a friend, we were entirely sick of looking at the cutesy label and cracked the thing just to get it out of our face. Yes...each to his own, I guess but umm...no thanks. Tasted like sticky sweet balsamic vinegar in a glass. A Costco legend and supposedly made to satisfy the market for sweet red wine, I don't get it. Just. Don't. Get. It.

So a cup of it went into the marinade.

Food: Five spice-marinated tri-tip with saffron-almond potatoes and Brussels sprouts

Beautiful rare-to-medium rare tri-tip marinated in five spice, hot smoked paprika, a cup of wine, olive oil, thyme and honey. Great meat that seemed to glow on the plate.

Saffron-almond potatoes (or Juanita's potatoes) that, along with the wine, revisited an old friend. It had been awhile since we had them. A usual accompaniment with plantain chicken made in a roulade style with ham and served with a Heredia white, it's a meal that's a top-fiver in the Ney house and tastes like the essence of 2008/2009. These potatoes tasted...nostalgic.

Brussels sprouts quickly sautéed without a browning in lemon juice and mint.

Everything tied together nicely. The saffron in the potatoes and the paprika in the marinade created a small Spanish bent and the Asian five spice notes didn't overwhelm the plate, only nicely playing in the background. The thyme and honey lifted the tri-tip and kept it from being heavy and the lemon juice in the Brussels sprouts kept the endnote light.

Big flavors that nonetheless kept a great balance, leaving us feeling satisfied without bursting at the seams.

Wine: 2005 First Drop Two Percent Barossa ($32 - LCBO - Toronto)

The 2% refers to the albariño in the blend. 98% shiraz and 2% albariño. Not an ordinary blend. A few winemakers mess around with a drop of viognier in red blends to great effect but albariño is a rare thing indeed. Much of albariño in Australia was, through DNA tasting, later found out to actually be French savagnin grape and it had been for years incorrectly labeled but all indications that I could find on this one is that this was true albariño (unless they were simply allowed to call what was already in the bottle albariño).

No decant. Weren't sure on the drinking window. Conflicting reports on the interwebs. Nose of blackberry toast, alcohol, some herbs and black licorice. Big dark fruits on the palate that are just starting to stew/meld together but are seemingly kept vibrant and separate by the albariño in the blend. Not seamless and smooth, a bit rough around the edges but in a good way. Stayed bright throughout the meal with a mid-palate core of char and creamy spice notes with an occasional mouthful of aging tannin but not unwelcome in the least. Still some life here. I worried.

It's been a year/year and a half since we last had this one and tasted virtually the same. All the tasty goodness still largely present.

Pairing: 90 Big food and big wine = something quite harmonious

Large food flavors that, in the end, didn't come off heavy. Large wine that, in the end, stayed bright and kinda light. It worked!

Five spice and shiraz seem to always work just fine but, as I said, this, overall, tasted nostalgic.

Certainly in the realm of big and brawny but everything stayed at the very bottom realm of such things. Nothing ever bullied.

Probably (and oddly) best with the potatoes. The fruit in the wine became more pure and jumpy. But it held its own with the meat, bringing out a herby char in the wine and even something tobacco-like (or old coffee).

The first time we had the 2005 First Drop, it glistened.

Much of that is still here. And that wee touch of albariño still makes it a beautifully food-friendly wine. Shiraz can be limited with food. This one opens that door a little bit.

Pretty great stuff.

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

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

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

To plagiarize myself:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mâche salad to round out the plate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pairing: 86 Not too shabby

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

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

Fine enough with the greens.

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

#114 - Beef Filet & English Cheddar With '05 Dominio De Atauta

Ah...it was good to have big flavors again.

Freakin' glorious.

A week in Portugal, while relaxing and quite beautiful at times, left us wanting when it came to food flavors.

The best single item I had, a quail tapa with apricots eaten with an insanely cheap '05 Quinta do Vale Meão at the stellar Chafariz do Vinho Enoteca in Lisbon, even left me wondering what would have happened if a pinch more salt were used.

We had good food in Portugal. Solid food, interesting food to a point. We just missed bigger flavors...and maybe some risks.

And the first full meal back brought it.

Food: Paulina beef filet with English cheddar, Whole Foods Seeduction bread and an arugula and parsley salad

Beef filet seasoned with a Penzeys Spice blend of sweet basil, Turkish oregano, red bell pepper, garlic, thyme fennel, black pepper and anise seed with a little salt and olive oil (and a touch of balsamic?) added. When the meat first hit the pan, the house smelled like fancy pancake syrup.

Cooked a great rare to medium-rare, the filet melted in my mouth with each spice alternately taking the stage as it dripped down my throat. Each bite was glorious, partly because we missed such flavors and partly because it was cooked so beautifully. A little over-the-top description but golly, we missed such things.

Served with aged cheddar from Montgomery Farms in Somerset, England. I'm no cheese maven but this one has the cheddar goods. Mostly indifferent to cheddar - and cheese to a certain point - the Montgomery cow's milk brings a subtle and long cheddar taste with a tiny grassy hit and a wee touch of must that made everything taste intentional, natural and balanced. Ponderous in many ways. Dry, firm and pretty delicious. With cheese, I continue to learn why it's good...and this is Good.

Served with Whole Food's Seeduction bread. Hearty bread with sunflower seeds, poppyseed, millet and what seems like a thousand other grains. It's the only bread at Whole Foods that ever really delivers the bready goodness when you're stuck in a pinch and have to buy bread there.

Simple, undressed arugula and parsley salad that was oddly more delicious than the sum of its parts. Again, probably missed home flavors.

Home flavors are what we want and this was exactly it. Loved it. Initially, we were leaning toward cracking a 2003 Clos Fourtet, serving it with vanilla mashed potatoes and getting all Bordeaux-y with it. In the end, with the heaviness that may have brought and just enduring 13 hours in the air, we're glad we didn't.

Wine: 2005 Dominio De Atauta Ribera Del Duero ($35 - Binny's)

Grape: Tempranillo

Region: Ribera Del Duero

Vintage (WS): 95 - Hold - Assertive wines with chewy tannins; the best have great depth

Toughy. Chatter on the interwebs talked about the wall of oak showing right now with this one. And with the vintage recommendation of 'hold', what we got was seemingly a wine right at the beginnings of shedding that and entering its tannin maturation phase.

Dominio De Atauta is a Mrs. Ney favorite. I've always been left trying to figure it out and end up pretty much loving it. Our first bottle ('02 or '03, most likely) of this was brought to the now-closed Rick's Cafe, a perfectly good if unspectacular Mediterranean BYO in Wrigleyville and, mostly because of the wine, I can remember most everything of that meal and the bottle. I remember the purity of the fruit and the beautifully dry, violet-tinged finish.

The winery is a rarity. Pre-Phylloxera vines with many over 100 years old (some over 150 years - the "La Mala" bottling), they're wines to experience and ponder and simply figure out. The process of rehabilitating the neglected vines has only been going on for a little over 10 years and the results have been, in our limited experience, a benchmark of what is great about Ribera wines (the '02 single vineyard "Llanos de Almendro" is in the hopper).

This particular one would benefit from some more time but nonetheless showed much of what it's going to be. A slight nose of herbs, tar and blackberry with an early palate that showed blackberry with some black cherry fruits. With some air (a quick decant that should have been longer), the fruit turned into a blackberry liqueur/blackberry pie note. Persistent but still light on its feet, it brought a medium-full mid-palate with a pleasing hit of smoked meat mixed with a touch of vanilla. The finish was the ponderous part. Oak was fading and more small jumps of vanilla showing but the tannins were drying things up. Not unpleasant but shortened it up a bit. Distinctive and borderline good-to-great but a couple more years in the bottle would be prudent.

The Domino de Atauta regular estate offering has seen an incremental increase in price since the first bottling in 2000, up to $50 now from its initial $30 tag (we got it on sale). Worth it?...Yeah. Maybe should have left it alone for a couple of years and/or given it a long decant but in the end, it became for us much of what we wanted. It's a distinctive Ribera style that you have to love and want to follow for that price but if you do, the rewards are great.

Pairing: 90 Stayed consistently solid with even a few surprises throughout the meal

Fell right in the great meat and wine wheelhouse with the filet, offering much of everything anyone would want. Maybe not transcendent but a solid core of meaty-winey goodness.

The purity of the fruit in the wine showed more with the English cheddar with more delineated flavors and really attacking the must in the cheese with a vengeance, turning the wine into something that just kept changing. More herbal and a more tar note. Gave it a bigger backbone.

Even entirely acceptable with the arugula/parsley salad, turning the blackberry fruit into a dried blackberry that was completely welcome.

A meal that was a welcome return to big home flavors.

#113 - Thomas Keller Chicken With A Red Instead Of A White

There's a difference between "yeah...that's good" and "that's what we want."

Oodles of meals exist in the world that we're more than happy to eat, would leave us satisfied and just generally are fine, good and tasty.

But that doesn't mean it's what we want.

Red wine and chicken falls under the former but not really the latter.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken with roasted potatoes and mâche

You know the bird and how to cook it. This one with a brighter skin taste and exceedingly juicy white meat. Roasted potatoes with a linguiça spread taken from The New Portuguese Table leftover from lunch that, while delicious at noon, turned into ridiculously good with a few hours to marry. Essence of linguiça in spreadable form. That exists? Yes...yes it does. And it's linguiçalicious.

Simple mâche salad to round it out.

An easy, tasty meal before vacation to the land where the aforementioned cookbook originated.

Wine: 2006 Umathum Pinot Noir Unter den Terrassen zu Jois ($15 - WDC)

We were sick of looking at it in the rack. Just entirely sick of looking at the label.

A clarified medium-deep red in the glass, bit of river mud on the nose right away. Closed at first, showing a mixture of plum and red raspberry with some muddled spice and tea notes.

Opened up after about an hour to show a more delineated, brighter fruit profile of the same fruit with a little cinnamon and just a wee bit of a Darjeeling tea note. Nice tannins kept everything in line.

Nothing special but outperformed many Oregon pinots in the $15 price range. Certainly got better as the meal went on.

Never got out of the realm of a change-of-pace pinot noir and didn't distinguish itself to any great degree but no complaints, really.

Pairing: 84 Just don't dig red wine and chicken

It's fine. But both of us aren't mad-crazy for coq au vin either. I missed the minerality that a white Burgundy offers along with some tropical/white wine fruit notes that brighten up the meal and play with the salt, skin and spices. Something about the greater range white wine offers with chicken lures both of us. More possibilities.

Red wine and chicken tastes...limited to both of us. To each his own, I guess.

There were moments of pleasantness, though. Played well with the potato-linguiça spread for the most part and the fruit in the wine really came out with the breast meat while the cinnamon showed up nicely with the leg and thigh.

If put in front of us, red wine and chicken would be eaten and liked. Just not loved or really wanted.

It's the Judd Apatow films of food and wine pairings. Seen the style, know the jokes and don't need to see it again.

A Note: Last week, a quick meal of fancy maccarone pasta with Bari tomato sauce and Trader Joe's sausage turned out pretty great for what it was. Better than that, actually. It was freakin' stellar. Started with the 2007 Tarì Agliancio Caggiano ($16 - WDC). Bracingly rough tannins and none of the floral/bright blackberry I have come to like from this wine. Needed roasted meat to get it anywhere close to working well with food and I don't even know if that would have helped. Some inconsistency with this wine in my world.

So we cracked a Portuguese wine, the 2008 Flor de Crasto ($12 - WDC), the baby brother in the Crasto line of goodness. Rather shockingly, worked just fine with the pasta (87 Pairing Score). All cinnamon and Mounds bar. Pleasing bitter dark chocolate, some Asian spice notes, more subdued fruit but a roundness and bargain tastiness that played well above its $12 price. Not saying I liked it better than the Quinta do Crasto Old Vines Reserva...but it was close. Very close in many ways.

#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.