#247 - Lamb, Vanilla Mash & Rapini With '05 Bodegas Astrales

Fine and good (enough).

Both of us thought, after taking a first bite of vanilla mash, that the meal could have slid in so much better with a Bordeaux more than this particular Ribera.

It was an odd showing for this vintage of Astrales.  Typical haunting Ribera nose, promising a deep smoky goodness but we didn't get that, at least not in the expression we expected.  A bit of a tenuousness to its backbone throughout its 47,000 different changes throughout the meal.  Felt like it was hanging on for dear life or pulled a hammy or something.  A confidence was present but felt more like a bravado hiding a deep insecurity.

We liked but didn't come close to loving this vintage of Astrales, our first (2004 here).  The test came when we took a break from eating.  Both of us had no inclinations to reach for it and drink it by itself.  The conclusion was "it's good," which is really just damning with faint praise.

Food:  Rosemary-garlic lamb with vanilla mashed potatoes and rapini

Trader Joe's lamb chops marinated in rosemary and garlic, then drizzled with balsamic and olive oil, cooked a perfect medium-rare.  We enjoyed the lamb.  It was good lamb.

Vanilla mashed potatoes, though, are the most sexy food on the planet.  Madagascar vanilla and we could taste it.  These tasted like Love on a pillowy cloud of Love.  Fat and fat with a side of fat but, golly, they're the most delicious thing ever.  Thomas Keller recipe.  Natch.

#246 - TK Chicken & Pea Risotto With '09 Daniel Chotard Sancerre

Weird winter.  Great winter.

The kind of winter in Chicago that doesn't make me feel like winter is never going to end.  The kind of winter I like - something that feels more like an extended respite from nice weather as opposed to typical Chicago winters, which usually feel like a test of one's soul.

Last night's meal tasted like spring, or a precursor to spring, or an announcement of a forthcoming spring - helped by the fact that it's felt all winter like spring will, in fact, arrive.  Past winters rarely offered such building hope so early or at all.  Nice thing, that.  Kept me spry.  Maybe not this spry, but spry enough.

Spring flavors and spring wine in the dead of winter that hasn't felt like the "dead of winter" in the least.  If you run into someone in Chicago griping about this winter, tell them to shove it.  This has been awesome.

#245 - Spanish-Style Hanger & Almond-Saffron Potatoes With '05 Pico Madama

Last night's progression on the thoughts of the wine:

1.  Meh
2.  Ummm...
3.  Certainly has a lot going on...
4.  This is pretty good stuff but not really our bag...
5.  I don't know...kinda like it...wouldn't buy it again...
6.  Well...if it was on sale...
7.  I think this might have a place...
8.  Crap...there's a lot going on here...
9.  I'm not saying I wouldn't buy it again...
10.  Boy, that settles and sits reeeally well.

A 50/50 monastrell/petit verdot, we expected more of an interesting diversion than something that was going to sit in our wheelhouse with such a Spanish-Spanish meal.  I can't say we loved this wine with the food but I can say that our opinion of the wine grew more and more favorable throughout the meal.  Not because it necessarily opened up as the meal progressed (though it did a little bit), more because we sort of gave ourselves over to what it offered - its generosity, its limitations and all.

#244 - Bo Ssam With Sparkling Riesling & Vouvray Sec

Crazy mad genius David Chang becomes more so once you see how easy it is to replicate one of the staples at his restaurant, Momofuku Ssam Bar in NYC.

The New York Times gives you the recipe, it's not labor-intensive in the least (just takes some monitoring) and only costs about $30 for the whole lot.

It's bo ssam, a salty, sticky, deeply delicious pork butt wonder that serves as the centerpiece to a Korean lettuce wrap buffet of goodness.

Chang leads the party here but a supporting cast of Michael Symon (pickled onions), Bill Kim (kimchi from Urban Belly) and Jacques Pepin (scallop pancakes) rounded out the party quite nicely, thank you very much.

And the wine...yeah...good enough with one being a winner.

Food:  Bo ssam pork with scallop pancakes, pickled onions, ginger- scallion sauce, ssamjang sauce, rice, kimchi and boston lettuce for wrapping

#243 - Walnut-Pomegranate Chicken Thighs & Israeli Couscous With An '03 Heredia Cubillo

Strange and delicious collection of food-wine meals of late.

Borscht with smoked trout on rye (cheap gewürztraminer), a meal that tasted like really fancy Arby's (Bogle Phantom) and this one, vittles that tasted like a Spanish-Persian food baby that secretly had a Greek father. Oh, the scandal!  Almodovar should make a film about it.

Who could play the ghost that represents the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War?  I'm going with Kathy Najimy.  Almodovar loves to gender-bend.

It's been years since we revisited the Heredia Cubillo world. I think the first one I ever had was the 1999 or 2000 vintage and I was oh-so impressed with its tobacco- orange peel-leafy bigness.  Sure, it was a bit of a bumpy ride going down but something about it appealed to me.

When picking out this wine for this meal, I was struck by how much I haven't craved it in recent years.  We've had oodles of meals where a Cubillo could have excelled but nothing about it has recently screamed, "Drink me!"

Some of that lies in the fact that much of Heredia's upper line is only $10 more than the Cubillo line.  Cubillo's appeal comes from its pokey weekday lunch of tapas and a match-matchy goodness that's defined by its appealing rough edges.  Tastes gritty, rough and weathered, like the leathered skin of an old Spanish goat herder.

But, for $10 more, a Bosconia or Tondonia turns that gritty goodness into such wonderful grace and finesse that it tastes like something that should cost so much more.  To wit:  go here.

Cubillo has a place.  It's just not a place we've wanted to return to lately.

Last night reinforced that impression a bit.

#242 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Let's do a connect-the-meals-with-wines puzzle!

Here are the wines:

1.  2009 Ponzi Pinot Noir
2.  2006 Ponzi Pinot Noir
3.  2004 Terre Rough Syrah Sentinel/Pyramid Block
4.  NV De Vallois Saumur Brut
5.  2005 Edmond Cornu & Fils Chorey-les-Beaune

And here are the meals:

1.  Roasted Chicken, Moondust Cheese & Mâche
2.  Braised Pork Shoulder, Savory Scones & Brussels Sprouts
3.  Szechuan Peppercorn Tuna, Roasted Beets & Frisée
4.  Semiramis Hummus & Dolmas

Clue:  the tuna and white Burgundy would have been terrible together!

Frankly (who's Frank?  Frank Lee Gifford!), only one pairing really worked on a superlative level and another was just flat-out awful.

#241 Orange-Green Olive Duck & Farro With A 1970 Heredia Bosconia

A New Year's tradition of sorts continues.

Just saw my first New Year's jogger, running as if he'd never run before, awkward and sloppy, jiggly and panting, so slow that the dog and I could almost keep up, looking like the Nike corporate headquarters puked up all over him, the tags freshly clipped off of all of it.

It's the kind of run that says this run, despite all good intentions, will not be repeated tomorrow.  It's the kind of run that instantly decouples the mind's best-laid, blind hope from reality with a hard smack in the face, telling you everything about what you've done and haven't done over the course of the last year.

Been there, buddy.

Good Luck.

We closed 2011 (Good Riddance. You kinda sucked.) with a magically delicious meal and a wine like no other, a wine older than either of us and a wine currently performing so much better than my New Year's jogger.

It was an aggressive beast worth every freaking cent.

#240 - Linguiça, Potato-Kale Hash & Manchego With '07 Vallado Tinto

In July of 2010, we paired this wine with duck leg stew and a tapa spread.

Delicious wine by itself then, but not delicious with the food.

I remember the flavors and pairing of that meal pretty well.  Reading that post now after seeing how this wine showed last night, it's pretty obvious that it wasn't ready to go a year and a half ago.  Tannins were just opening and becoming accommodating enough then but everything else hadn't come out of its shell quite yet.  Throw on a gravy-like duck leg entrée and the fact that Portuguese reds typically scream for food less subtle and stewish, I don't think the wine had much of a chance.

Portuguese reds want simple, bold flavors with less complete integration.  They want a little char, a little bitter, a little starch.  They want rustic to match their rustic guts and then use that as a launching pad to expand out from there.

Last night's meal was that and the wine was true to form.  Textbook, really.  Mrs. Ney nailed it.  The wine tasted like War by itself.  All iron and blood with churned up earth.  With a bite of potato-kale hash and linguiça, an expanding balloon of dark but sparkly and round plum completed the delicious frame and turned this wine into one of the best showings of a $20 wine we've ever had.

I thought this wine was worth every bit of the $20 price tag a year and a half ago but probably not much more.  I was wrong.  This one's plays well above its price and has plenty of drinking life ahead.

Food:  Linguiça, potato-kale hash, marinated manchego, fig-almond cake and baguette

#239 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Family.

That's all I gotta say 'bout that.

So Merry Christmas-Happy Holidays to everyone out there looking for a wine pairing and stumbling across our humble little website.  Or if you've somehow been redirected from a dental implant (?) site as it says in my statistics page.  The mind is awhirl with ideas how THAT happened.

Wooly bubbles, an out-of-this-world bargain Eiswein, a disappointing Heredia and Hema's Kitchen made at home highlight this week's roundup.

Let's get started.

Meal #1 - Pork liver pâté, Chaource cheese and baguette with Anselmann blanc de noir Eiswein & Ayala Zero Dosage Champagne

#238 - Short Ribs in Ancho-Pumpkin Mole & Potato Far With An '08 Quinta Cruz Touriga Nacional

Ever had an ancho-pumpkin mole, a starch that tastes like crêpe batter and shredded potatoes had a baby and then washed it down with blackberry licorice juice?

We have.  Last night.

Tasted like we tried a restaurant in some niche neighborhood in west Chicago where French-Hungarians settled decades ago but heavy influence from Mexico seeped in and someone decided to open a place that catered to both.

And it was delicious.

Food:  Short ribs in ancho-pumpkin mole, salty-sweet potato far and arugula with pomegranate seeds

#237 - Thomas Keller Buttermilk Fried Chicken & Onion Biscuits With NV Pierre Péters Blancs de Blancs

Continuing the jones theme.

More bubbles, this time with fried chicken, a pairing that fits like a glove in many eyes.

Last November, a first run at TK fried chicken achieved that with a Királyudvar sparkling.  That sparkler brought some great acid with dominant peach pit and grapefruit notes, supporting the chicken, wedge salad and buttermilk biscuits, keeping everything lifted, 3-D and surprisingly light. Good food memory there.

Here we had a more fancy, idiosyncratic bubbly offering flavors we didn't expect from a 100% chardonnay.  Cherry pit followed by white raspberry describes the evolution with more traditional citrus, yeast and toasted baguette serving as the backbone down deep.  Less friendly mix and mingle with the food as last November's success but nothing that clashed in the least.

Food:  Thomas Keller buttermilk fried chicken, onion biscuits and mâche with pomegranate seeds

#236 - Hanger, Latkes & Rapini With '08 Owen Roe Yakima Red + Anteprima

Champagne and Washington expect to get a lot of play in our house over the next few months.  They're our current jones, it seems.

Washington wines, in our limited experience of 10-15 bottles or so over the last few years, seem to be less about the winemaker, like so many California wines (and even Oregon wines to an extent), and more about the land.  An Old World sensibility really does come through with an inevitable New World freshness merely outlining the body.

More restraint and hands-off construction and less chasing of that one-note, unibody flavor so loved by so many.  Less easily identifiable flavors and more mystery brought on by not screwing with it so much.

Our nascent exposure to Washington wines has been a good one, something that seems to have opened a floodgate of sorts.  We're on board.

I've sort of jumped off the Bordeaux train lately due to expense, its food limitations and, on a certain level, boredom.  It's such a niche wine not exactly lined up with the food we typically eat.  But Washington, a wine region that pays homage left and right to Bordeaux blends and tradition, seems to be broadening that a bit with wines offering a wider food basket its wines can match up with.  They're less...rigid.

#235 - Still Alive!

Geesh!  It's been a month (?).

An annoyingly lingering month-long cold and the lack of greenbacks in the wallet lately has led to the absence of good food and wine in our house.  No point spending money on stuff we can't taste.

But things seem to be back to normal for the most part so two easy favorites were right and proper to jump back on the tasting horse.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella, tomatoes and basil with baguette and two sparklers

I extolled the virtues of Trader Joe's pre-packaged marinated mozzarella in olive oil and herbs a few weeks ago as a near-perfect quick and easy lunch option.  Marinating your own seemed to be an exercise in willingly wasting your time when something that good came so easy and fresh.  Mrs. Ney gave it a shot anyway...just to know.  The result was something just as good, but work.  Better mozzarella but not by much.  Better olive oil but not by much.  She gussied up the TJ's version with fresh tomatoes/kumatoes in the past so a freshness was still present and wanted, even needed.  In the end, part of the joy in this type of meal is the spontaneity.  No thinking about it the day before and prepping.  It's probably the best buy and eat lunch in our world right now.  Grab a baguette and bubbles and there's little that creates a break from a workweek quicker than this.

#234 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

About two months ago, a meal of Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with an '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint led us to thinking we'd just had the best grüner veltliner ever.

Graceful, nuanced and delicious at every turn.

So much so that I rushed out the next day and bought two more bottles.  Now, it's only been two months and we saw a touch of acid depletion in that first experience but this week's drinking of that bottle left me perplexed.

The acid two months ago ever so tenuously kept it in the world of delicious in great ways, coming off like a healthy Mickey Mantle, the later years.  This week, Mick's knees buckled trying to stretch of single into a double and it feels like he'll never be the same again.

Without the tiny acid lift, we got flab, flab and more flab tasting like the cheapest of cheap that had been left open in the fridge for days.  One more left.  Maybe it was just a bad bottle but nothing in the way of food flavors tried with two different flavor worlds did anything to make it remotely interesting.

Let's get to it.

#233 - Flank Steak, Cuban Beans & Sweet Potato Fries With '09 Ex Umbris

Freezer food!

And delicious freezer food it was, geared toward drinking a New World syrah, which was once again wanted and craved by both of us.

Funky that after drinking wine pretty seriously for years that an entirely new craving and joy can come from a style of wine already explored and somewhat dismissed.

Like many things in life, keeping an open mind and returning to explore the foundations of previously firm opinions just to see if they continue to be just is not only important but necessary.  It keeps one young, allowing intellectual curiosity to continue to be a driving force.

Tying such a thing to wine seems to be a bit much but in a small way, I have been surprised by our new embrace of California/Washington syrah.  Sure, we loved Australian shiraz in the past, even some California syrah, and still do but moved away from them in favor of lower alcohol, more idiosyncratic and many times terroir-driven wines, as many people do (and don't shut up about) as they progress up the chain of wine love.

Our recent dalliance/return in/to the bigger style feels like something that, in some form, will stay.

Here's why.

Food:  Flank steak, Cuban black beans and chipotle sweet potato fries

#232 - Spanish Niçoise-y Salad, Greek Feta & Carrot Purée With '09 Síria

Fancy stuff, in the food and in the wine.

The fancy came from the purity and abundance of flavors and the ability to taste every one of them in any given bite.

The tastes:  carrots, anchovies, parsley, honey, mint, harissa, thyme-infused olive oil, pickled onions, sesame seeded Syrian bread, feta, kumatoes, Greek black olives, caraway seeds, pink peppercorns, garlic, lemon juice, dill.

So Greeky, kinda Spanishy, bit of North African, all comprising a tapas-y type feel, a little dip here, a bite there and loving every bit of it.

Served with a wine made from a grape new to us as a 100% bottling and possessing a balance, vitality and Portuguese weirdness that slid right into the food in delicious and new ways.

Food:  Spanish-y Niçoise salad, greek feta in honey and pink peppercorns, carrot purée, thyme-infused olive oil and Syrian bread 

#231 - Two Birthday Meals

Insert Jack Benny joke here.

Like...for the condition that must exist before the joke starts ad infinitum.

For a birthday such as that, two of the classics, or new classics, or...heck, just two meals that we've come to immensely enjoy seemed apt, right and proper.

Italian lunch and sort of Cuban dinner.

And sandwiched between both meals was an Iowa loss to Minnesota so Happy Birthday to me, indeed.

Lunch:  Marinated mozzarella and kumatoes with baguette

#230 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New puppy in the house.  She came with everything that comes in the new puppy package.

Mostly good, though.  Promising.  Quite promising.  We think we like her.

Three meals and three wines this week, given a TWIB post to highlight two new wines that we very much enjoyed, even if they weren't something that evoked splendor in the glass (see what I did there...).

Meal #1:  TJ's $4 roasted chicken, Brussels sprouts with pancetta, baguette and butter

#229 - Pancetta Lamb, Pea Purée & Potatoes With '06 Ken Wright

Let's get link-happy.

We've mostly eaten our lamb in a supporting cast sense this year, using it as a protein to complement an interesting recipe here (Turkish beany surprise) and/or to try an ignored grape/style there (cabernet franc/Amarone).

We've had it out in the world this year (-ish) at Taxim (sausage form) and Blackbird (saddle form/rack form) and didn't have it out at Bacchus, unfortunately.

Or, when lamb was made to be the star of a meal, something like a potato-kale cake, fregola and carrot purée or, well, Turkish beany surprise, came along and stole its thunder.

Back to the lamb basics last night:  Lamb made to complement the lamb, support the lamb and star the lamb with flavors leaning more toward clean American.

When that happens, it's pinot noir.  Tried and true, always delicious and tastes like Home, tradition, holiday, friendship and Love ("To every season, turn, turn, turn...").

Food:  Pancetta-wrapped lamb, pea purée, pomegranate seeds and roasted potatoes with mâche salad

#228 - Moroccan Phyllo Pie With '08 François Villard Condrieu

If you'd asked me two weeks ago where Condrieu is located, I'd have guessed southeastern France.

And that's about as specific as I could have been.

Squeezed between Côte-Rôtie and Saint-Joseph in the northern reaches of Northern Rhône, Condrieu and its surrounding AOCs represent a huge blind spot in my wine world.  Heck, red Burgundy, much of Northern Italy and the Northern Rhône...you may as well be talking about carburetors and manifolds or something because I'm clueless.  All of it shoots right over my head.

That will change in time.  It's usually some unassuming bottle bought on a whim that cracks the code of a region/AOC/style, sending us scurrying to find out more.

This François Villard viognier might be one of those bottles.

Delicious, fairly unique stuff that if given blind, I'd have thought it was a white Burgundy in many ways from some Burgundy AOC I know nothing about.

Hate to get wine-sappy here but that's one of the great things about wine.  There's always a new surprise.  Always something you've never had.  Always something you didn't know.

Food:  B'stilla - Moroccan phyllo pie with arugula and pomegranate seeds

#227 - Dry-Aged Filet And Potato Cakes With '05 Clos Apalta

Anniversary Dinner!  Number Seven.

Crap.  Now I have the Grizzly Adams theme song in my head.

With a sick dog, we didn't have the option to celebrate the occasion out on the town, but last night we got flavors that didn't taste like home flavors, so mission accomplished in many ways.

A carménère/cabernet blend is not home flavors (or 'out' flavors either).

A roasted vegetable chimichurri.  Not home flavors.

A zucchini/carrot veg medley.  Not home flavors.

The whole meal didn't taste like home and we liked it.

Don't need it again but we liked it.

Food:  21 day dry-aged beef filet, potato cakes and zucchini/carrot medley with chimichurri

#226 - Two Meals And Two Wines

Last night's wine was an example of a wine made so much better by the fact that both of us wanted nothing but California syrah.

Rare thing, that; wanting California syrah to such a degree.  Sometimes, satisfying a yen jettisons the opinion of a wine from the "yeah...good stuff" realm into the "that's the best thing I've ever had in the history of history!" silly superlative world even if it merely shows typical, open and proper.

The key came in the non-fancy fancy food with flavors on the plate we haven't had before, which was the goal of the meal.

And what flavors they were.  The collection of Iberian peninsula cookbooks continues to amaze.

Food:  Spicy Azorean garlic-roasted pork with fideos, black olive gremolata and pickled onions

#225 - Flank Steak, Duck Fat Potatoes and Toscano Cheese With '04 Vale Meão

I still surprised how medium-bodied this wine was.

Every review for every Quinta Do Vale Meão wine talks about its 'richness' and 'powerful body.'  We always got something leading towards richness and power but they always pulled back from the edge at the right time so words like 'finesse' and 'grace' and a 'pretty touch of earth' were always bandied about.

Big, full, rich wines can of course (and do) have those elements but in the context of liking a wine, for us, those words denote something that isn't really big, full and rich.

Vale Meão wines always love to have a dalliance with bigness and fullness but, in the end, come back to what they are:  their own unique place of the very definition of the top end of medium-bodied - flavors that evoke richness with a body to balances all that out.  The really good ones charge right up to the full-bodied line, taunt the big boys on the other side and then just stay there, taunting, "Look what we can do! Screw your extraction!"

Having said that, the 2004 is and has been for us closer to the world of a standard medium-bodied than we expect from Vale Meão, even missing some of the aspects we love about their wines, in particular a touch of Asian spice and a hidden surprise 2/3 of the way down.

Food:  Flank Steak, duck fat potatoes and Toscano cheese with an arugula salad

#224 - Bill Kim-Inspired Pork Stir Fry With '09 Selbach-Oster Riesling

A stir fry sauce inspired by the lamb and brandy dumpling filling from Urban Belly on California drove the meal last night.

And after the success we had with riesling (Hirtzberger Smaragd Hochrain) at Urban Belly in December, a return was welcome, if a bit off the mark in pairing terms.

The slight miss came from the sugar in the Selbach-Oster Spätlese as it needed more acid/spice from the food to balance things out and the fact that, for now, the higher level of sugar in this Spätlese just isn't our bag.

The wine bullied the meal a bit, we liked the food much more than the wine by itself and we missed a salty/mineral play and higher acid that we want from white wine right now.  That about sums it up.

An Austrian Smaragd was the play here after having the meal.  Such is life.

Food:  Bill Kim-inspired pork stir fry over polenta

#223 -TK Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '00 Gaston Chiquet

A treasure trove of Spanish, Portuguese and Canary Island goodness arrived yesterday from our San Francisco trip and a visit to the Spanish Table in Berkeley.

Should be a tasty, Iberian-inspired winter.

Time to play catch-up.

A standard Thomas Keller chicken meal went through the stratosphere with the second-best Champagne we've ever had.

Food:  TK Chicken, Chaource cheese and baguette with mâche

More modifications to the TK chicken as Mrs. Ney finds a happy balance between deliciousness and breezy prep.  Good one here.  Might be a keeper.

#222 - Duck, Farro, Oranges & Green Olives With '02 Heredia Bosconia

As López de Heredia typically releases their reds eight to nine years after the vintage, we've recently had a bit of an Oreo cookie experience in terms of superlative Heredia goodness.

Serving as the cream, it was the 2001 Bosconia that blew us away two Augusts ago, served with patatas bravas, linguiça and Iberico ham, Idiazabal cheese and arugula.

Serving as one chocolate cookie, the 2000 Bosconia was helped along immensely by the lavender lamb, piquillo marmalade, pistachio fregola and asparagus but showed a dark, brooding nature and those signature tea tannins wrapped in cinnamon and hints of orange peel that make Heredia so good.

Last night's meal was the other chocolate cookie layer.  It's the 2001 that stands out in my mind as something so wondrously more broad in scope, depth, length and satisfaction.  So pretty, so evocative.

2002 was an extremely difficult vintage in Rioja with bombardments of frost early in the growing season and a rainy June.  Bosconia was spared much of the damage but yields were down significantly across the board, according to their website.

The result, as per usual with Heredia, is a wine that's all Heredia, hitting all the typical, deliciously joyous notes, even if it's not jumping out of the glass and sailing on forever.

But what it brought to the star of the night, the food, was more than we thought.

#221 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

Our last post, Bill Kim chicken, soba noodles and white asparagus with the 2003 Hirtzberger Axpoint Grüner Veltliner, was the highlight of our grub and drink week but with a week off work for the annual September restaurant vacation, food and wine together at dinner every night nicely complimented my pokey, meandering, highly unproductive hiatus from asking, "Would you like another Coke?"

Some value plays in this week's TWIB Notes.  Friendly French on three occasions, one fine and good enough German offering and a deliciously surprising back-and-forth with two off-region tempranillos, with all the wines under $20.

#220 - Bill Kim Chicken, Soba & White Asparagus With An '03 Hirtzberger Axpoint

We've had a nice survey of quality grüner veltliners over the past two years, thanks mostly to the suggestions from our favorite wine person at Wine Discount Center.

Last night's offering, a 2003 single vineyard released at $45 and now sold for $20 due to the perceived lack of acidity needed for aging in the initial reviews right out of the shoot, is the best one both of us have ever had.

While the acidity certainly didn't define the wine, it tasted like the subdued level of acid most likely experienced right away, in 2004 or 2005, was arrested, staying in the realm of low-ish but nonetheless utterly performing its due diligence, lifting everything else, rounding out the edges, turning the wine into a three-dimensional delight as if it was merely a couple of years old instead of eight.

The big reviewers and their short drinking windows for Austrian wines continue to give us the best wine values when they're halved in price one year after Wine Spectator or Wine Advocate says they're done.

It's one example of how the domination of the market by the big-boy reviewers actually benefit wine drinkers.  Cheap goodness all around.  Of the 25 or so we've bought at a severe discount from the release price over the last three years, maybe two or three weren't Good Stuff.

#219 - Skirt Steak, Mushrooms, Spinach & Vanilla Mash With '00 Clos l'Oratoire

It's tough to have the 2003 Clos Fourtet work as a Right Bank Bordeaux benchmark for us.

When we drank a 375ml of that Clos Fourtet in 2006, it was all dark, dirty, sneaky and haunting.  I thought I had experienced a wine epiphany.  "I think I love Right Bank Bordeaux!"

In our experience since then, they've been finicky in our world.

No exception last night.  We cracked this 2000 Clos l'Oratoire about an hour before drinking to see where it was, found it muted and tight, decanted for an hour but still barely got a crowbar in the door jamb.  After two hours, with much of the food consumed, the wine started to hit its stride with the acid coming to the fore, bringing everything into balance but even that window seemed exceedingly small.

As I said.  Finicky.

When it did hit its stride with small touches of ash, tar, blackberry and lead framed well, both of us still thought, "Nothing special here."

But the French-type feast was very much wanted.

#218 - Blackbird

We saw the beginnings of a chef transition back in December at Blackbird and it was right on script for a place of the quality of the restaurant.

David Posey, Mike Sheerin's sous chef for I believe a couple of years (and an Alinea/Trio vet), had just taken the reins.  The impression of a definitive change in the preparation and flavor came in the small details then.

The transition was gradual - at least through one seasonal menu, we only visit Blackbird a couple of times a year - with echoes of an overarching Sheerin molecular style still present but it tasted more back to basics in the best way possible, like it was preparing for an exploration into a broader, more elemental scope down the road.

#217 - Szechuan Tuna, Beets & Pea Shoots With '06 Ponzi Pinot Noir

The last time we had the 2006 Ponzi estate bottling of pinot noir in April, I remember starting to wonder how long it had left.

The acid that typically and uniquely surrounds and penetrates any year of this Ponzi offering had previously showed signs of fading in this vintage.

Last night's experience was the opposite.  The acid seems to have simply transitioned into a different phase as opposed to showing a linear regression to death.  This acid was alive, jumpy and dominating in a way that we sorta loved.

The experience still stayed more in the world of seeing where the wine had evolved to instead of coming off delicious, fresh and balanced but in the realm of understanding why acid is so important to wine and enjoying it for where it currently sat in its life, good drink I say.

Food:  Szechuan Tuna with beets and pea shoot salad

#216 - San Francisco

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

So...success.  We liked it muchly.

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

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

#215 - Borlotti Bean & Blue Cheese Fregola Risotto With 2003 Hobbs Gregor Shiraz

Grab Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman, we're jumpin' into the WABAC machine.

Last October, we had a top-three meal of 2010 consisting of lamb, fregola risotto and carrot purée with this wine and ruminated about not even needing the lamb.  It did little with the wine while the superlative stuff on the plate was the blue cheese fregola and what it did with the Hobbs Gregor.

Last night, we omitted the lamb, replaced it with borlotti beans and were all the better for it, resulting in a meal that was all of the "Yes!" and none of the "meh."

It was a whittling down, a honing in on what absolutely shined with one of our favorite wines, taking that relatively narrow flavor explosion from a side dish and expanding it out into a meal not driven by a protein but introducing elements that mimic what's good about a protein, like depth and char and meaty qualities.

And that's what happened.  We not only didn't miss the meat, we didn't want the meat because everything we want in meat was there in meatless form.

It became a meal that proves the notion that big-boy, burly and deep shiraz doesn't always need meat to tame it.  There are a ton of different avenues to pursue that makes for stupid-good stuff.

"After all, Sherman.  Isn't it important in life to avoid a Hobbesian choice?"

"Oh, Mr. Peabody."

Food:  Borlotti bean & blue cheese fregola risotto with arugula salad

#214 - Not Thomas Keller Chicken, Chaource & Baguette With '07 Fichet Meursault

We're torn.

On the one hand, Thomas Keller chicken is chicken on crack with stupid-good crispy skin, a pool of juice that could be sold on the street and turn a tidy profit and leg and thigh meat that turns so dark and succulent.

On the other hand, due to the high cooking temperature and longer time in the oven, keeping the breast meat moist (huh-huh - I enjoy lame running gags) has been a delicate balancing act, usually just missing the mark.

So along came the Cook's Illustrated version of simple roasted chicken in this month's issue, cutting the cooking time in half while turning the oven off halfway through to allow the bird to continue cooking but at a gradual and incrementally lower temperature.  Seemed right and proper to keep the breast meat juicy.

So we gave it a go.

#213 - Beet Gazpacho, Moroccan-y Lamb Over Rice & Carrot Salad With an '07 Beaume-de-Venise

I think I can declare the White Sox dead after last night's monkey-hump, which means they'll go on a run.  That's how my declarations usually go.

In other news, check out this week's New Yorker story on the details of the raid on the Bin Laden compound in Abbottabad.  Great read.

Back to the grub and juice.  And back to the recipes of Jamie Oliver along with another 2007 Rhône.

This bottle fell in the same vein as the Domaine Grand Veneur Clos de Sixte from Tuesday, also showing a surprisingly light touch driven by earth and herbs with the fruit supporting the lead actors.

For a hugely ripe vintage that the big critics said was a classic and the smaller (read: probably better) ones calling it overblown and overripe, we've had six or seven on the lower end of cost spectrum that have mostly been quite graceful, restrained and not at all overripe.

While the wine was fine stuff, the food led the way here.

Food:  Beet gazpacho, Moroccan-y lamb over rice and Indian carrot salad

#212 - TWIB Notes: This Week In Bottles

New feature here at FWW.

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

Let's get right to it.

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

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

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

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

#211 - Rosemary Lamb & Potato-Kale Cake With A 2000 Amarone

Trying to till through sparse or vague reviews for a wine bought at a bargain and figuring out how to drink it can be a difficult plough.

We got this 2000 Amarone at a steep discount, down to $35 from $60, which was probably flag #1.

A mid-level producer from a very fine vintage in Amarone, recommendations on wines from top-end producers in Amarone typically want people to wait ten, sometimes twenty years before drinking them and most don't even release them until five years after the vintage.  Here's one that should be forging ahead quite nicely yet...nearly 50% off.

Then there was the Wine Spectator review:

90  Intense, with currants, herbs and a tinge of iodine. Full-bodied and smooth, with concentrated fruit and mineral flavors. Very fine tannins that firm up a bit on the finish. Bitter chocolate aftertaste. Needs time. Best after 2006. 950 cases made. –JS

Looking back after drinking it, some more flags.  The review was done upon release, in 2005, yet we have a "needs time" followed by a "best after 2006."  A short gap followed by an absence of a real drinking window and pretty generic descriptors used for an Amarone translates to a wine that is "fiiiinnnne" and good enough or typical but nothing exciting.

That's what we got as well, along with typically good lamb, a shockingly delicious potato-kale cake and an "Oregonzola" cheese from Rogue Creamery to pair with the Amarone that blew us away.

But shiraz or syrah was the play here.

#210 - Shrimp On Fire, Plantains & Brussels Sprouts Slaw With '06 Pichler Riesling

Ever have a meal that teetered on the line of too spicy hot to eat but effectively held on the line enough to enjoy it for its mouth-scalding fiery goodness?

That was Shrimp On Fire, not the name of the actual recipe, just what resulted from substituting the presumed heat equivalent of six arbol chilies with about twenty old, presumably flavor-faded, piri piri peppers.

Oops!

It reminded me of the Modern Family episode where Cameron orders the Diablo at a Mexican restaurant.  We had the fiery shrimp sweats with eyes watering and the inside of our mouths screaming bloody murder.

In ways, we liked it for its heat and the underlying peanut in the sauce was delicious.

No wine was going to save this pairing, unfortunately.  We needed booze in the form of margaritas or something to counter the heat, which was too bad because the Pichler was all sorts of interesting, even elegant.

Food:  Shrimp on fire, plantains and Brussels sprouts slaw

#209 - Orecchiette & Lentils With 2010 De Falco Falanghina

Shorter one day as yesterday's prodigious length burned up any useful part of my brain.

Last night's meal wasn't better than bison flank, risotto and Duorum but if you caught us in the right mood, or the bison meal caught us in a crabby one and this one in a friendly, "the world's so nice!" one, orecchiette and lentils with falanghina might have won.

In short, it was close, and closer than we expected.

Probably because it's a Lidia Bastianich recipe that fills you up while leaving you feeling so, so clean.  She does that.

And it was meatless...except for a bit of ham dust.

Food:  Orecchiette and lentils

A modification (s) from Lidia's recipe, substituting orecchiette for rigatoni.  I got a thing with how the orecchiette's little cups catch more sauce.  Less messy and you get more of the good stuff.

#208 - Bison Flank Steak, Tapenade & Risotto With '07 Duorum Reserva

One seemingly innocent element in many of the best pairings over the history of this here blog has served as the literal and figurative starchy-oozy gooey glue to what made them great.

We like various grains risotto'ed up.

Jus' sum'in 'bout it.  Something about its ability to round out edges in the rest of the food and the wine, round out the pairing, enhance spicing, perk up fruit, help along secondary flavors and bring a rational, sane and mature flavor to a meal.

Stupid Italians.  They got yet another thing right.

Whether it's a saffron risotto with arborio, blue cheese fregola, pistachio fregola, pearl municion, fennel arancini, English pea risotto, duck risotto or various other takes on these and other styles, risotto has been the happy-slappy glue to many a great meal for us over two-plus bloggy years and more.

Last night was no different.  Outstanding food here that harkened back to a former food place for us and served with a wine that was all Portugal.

Food:  Bison flank steak with almond/olive tapenade and Israeli couscous/São Jorge risotto