#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.

#111 - Jerk Chicken & Goya Products With NV Brut Rosé

Jerk Chicken is kinda fun to say.

Not as fun as Jerk Turkey, though.

Something about the repetitive 'ur' that gets me back to my Iowa roots. "Wur gunna eat sum braaat-WURst with sum mus-turd...and maybe sum catsup. After that, we gunna worsh the flatboat."

I can do this all day.

Food: Jerk chicken thighs with goya empanadas and croquetas and a tomato/pomegranate seed salad

It's frozen food/eat-the-leftovers week in the Ney house with the big 2010 vacation just a week away. Mrs. Ney promises a week of food weirdness.

The jerk marinade from Saveur using soy sauce, onion, scallion, chiles, cloves, five-spice, allspice berries, nutmeg, S&P, thyme and veg oil, slathered all over chicken thighs and marinated for 24 hours.

Big fans of jerk here and this was no exception. Maybe got more of a liquid all-spice with this one along with more of the allspice berry. Something more berry-like kicked up.

If you haven't, get to know Goya products. Solid Latin frozen food options, this time with plantain and cheese empanadas that are deliciously earthy and ham and cheese croquetas that are a great, mushy, hammy mess.

Topped off with a cherry tomato, pomegranate seed, parsley and arugula salad.

Easy meal. Monday meal. Tasty and Good meal. And it made room in the freezer.

Wine: NV Lucien Albrecht Cremant D'Alsace Brut Rosé ($18 - Whole Foods)

100% Pinot Noir, smelled like strawberry donuts right out of the bottle. Respectable bubbles and a subdued strawberry fruit note that mixed with a good core of red berries. Not big and fruity, though. Dry, clean finish with good length and structure. Almost elegant. Almost.

We both liked for $18. Recently we had an utterly delicious Schramsberg 100% Pinot Noir Napa Sparkling at Ad Hoc that retails for $40 and, for half the price, it satisfied a lot of sparkling Pinot Noir rosé yens I've had since the Schramsberg. Wasn't terribly distinctive or memorable but had enough guts and gentle openness to warrant the dollars and work with the food.

Pairing: 87 Not too shabby at all.

We just weren't in the mood for red with more Chicago hotness on the weather menu for the night, but a Mas De Maha might have been spectacular.

In some ways, this was like trying to squeeze a square peg in a round hole with jerk and non-red wine but we ended up happy. Oddly, the ham and cheese croquetas were the only thing that didn't work with the wine. Fell flat.

The rosé's subtle fruit and dry backbone was the winner, standing up just fine to the jerk, getting cozy with the empanadas and shining with the salad. More of a catch-all type pairing than something the utterly sung. The wine admirably fielded everything thrown at it with a certain panache and gamesmanship and was good enough that we might even do it again.

#110 - Tapas Spread With '01 Heredia Bosconia

I kills me that we didn't decant.

Well...not so much.

But this changed.

It's a sin, I tell you. A sin that we haven't had a Heredia red since February. That was the '64 Tondonia, a wine I'm quite fond of in a very euphemistic sense. The only other Heredia red we've drunk since the inception of this blog in late November of last year was a 2000 Bosconia when I was sick. DOES. NOT. COUNT!

And it would have been nice to compare being that it's all lined up vintage-vineyard-wise and all. But I can't.

All I can tell you is that it was a freakin' gorgeous late summer day in Chicago, the first day (or maybe the second or third day) where the rhythms of the summer could even be tracked/felt/understood and we had a meal that played right into that wheelhouse.

Spanish.

It's unfortunate in many ways that we've diverted from full-board Spanish as much as we have in the last ten months or so. It's what we love more than most things on this Earth. I blame a family dinner at a Spanish restaurant last winter but that's just me.

Last night was a re-introduction back into the fold. Have I told you about the New Spanish Table cookbook? I think I have.

Have I mentioned the fact that I feel a bit embarrassed that we haven't drank Heredia red to any extent, really, over the last ten months? Embarrassed might be a stretch. Unfortunate is more accurate. Along with our dog and not being around people, it's what we like.

Food: Patatas bravas with linguiça and Iberico ham, Idiazabal cheese and arugula

Perfect patatas bravas with whole/macerated/sauced cherry tomatoes (garlic, onion, chili flakes, salt, pepper...oh...here's the recipe. Read it, know it, use it.) mixed in along with linguiça. The sauce on the side to keep it fresh, added at the last minute right before eating. It was a bite filled with recent food loves too long absent - the kind of thing that, along with the great weather, made me turn the page on the miserable summer we've had. Felt...almost sentimental, like something changed or something was offered to mark a passing.

Iberico ham which, for a brief period in Chicago shot up to almost $200/lb, is down to below its original $100/lb initial offering in 2005 (the year the FDA finally loosened its britches and allowed it into the country) at $85/lb right now. So one can get an entirely adequate 1/8 lb. portion of Iberico for like $13! No excuses anymore for the best ham experience on the planet and it's not even close.

Idiazabal sheep's milk cheese that could have been a Manchego/Parmigiano-Reggiano well-aged blend and I wouldn't have known the difference. Not Manchego-y but close. Not chalky/nutty but close. Not salty-lifty but close. Mellow. Nice. Almost ethereal.

An arugula salad with a lemon thyme/sherry vinegar vinaigrette to finish it off. Any Spanish person would have swooned over it. It was Spanish without any fake pretense. Just simple and Good. Well...maybe the Iberico was a bit over-the-top but c'mon.

Wine: 2001 López de Heredia Viña Bosconia ($28 - WDC)

Grape: 80% tempranillo, 15% garnacha and 5% graciano and mazuelo

Appellation: Rioja

Vintage (WS): 93 Hot, dry weather gave ripe wines with opulent flavors and powerful structure

It's a wee lad right now but nonetheless oh, so lovely. The fruit isn't distinctive enough yet, showing a smoked cherry note with a ton of cigar box (and a touch of leather and cedar). If I drank it blind, I wouldn't have known it was a Heredia until about an hour in. Popped and poured because of how the day and dinner came to us. But it was unmistakably an old-style Rioja in the best sense, just don't think I've ever had one at this point before. To feel the newness of it all was new. Beautiful tannins right now, though. Washed over my palate in a way that felt evocative yet new and fresh. Felt like putting on an old t-shirt long gone that remarkably still fit in the way I remember.

And I didn't even love it initially. It took a few sips to figure it out.

Old-style Spanish wines in my world have something else, something that Italian wines can't touch. It's a graceful acidity, an acidity that's wrapped in its cigar box notes, toning it down to something that feels like Hemingway. You can smell the smoke wafting up during a good yarn. This one has it in spades. You drink it and taste something like a feeling.

And that was without the signature autumn leaf note usually so prevalent in properly-aged Heredia reds.

This one's gonna age oh, so beautifully.

Pairing: 94-97-99 Ever read a novel that you know will stick in your craw for eternity? How is it going to sit? How is it going to be processed? The meal felt that ridiculously ponderous.

Mrs. Ney says unequivocally 99. And that's because she didn't have to think about the pairing. It was perfect in the sense of NOT having to think about it. I tend to agree with one caveat - I want to reserve the 95-100 for the unseen.

I had a dalliance with the unseen. But given that, I would eat and drink this meal and this wine a hundred times over and never, ever get sick of it. It had everything.

Tons of funk that was not unpleasant with the Iberico. Tasted OOOOOld. With a bite of potato, linguiça and tomato, it's a 100 perfect score, even with the relative tightness of the wine. In fact, it might have helped. The acid, carb backbone and smoky earth with the linguiça took a crowbar to the wine, opened it up and made it taste like it was right at its peak. The change made me pause.

I couldn't have loved it more.

With proper Spanish food and this wine (or any Heredia, really), I don't know if there's anything better in this world.

A quick note: Something of a dichotomy compared to tonight's pairing, it was Frozen Food Sunday in the Ney house last night. I declare - the best frozen food Sunday ever. Trader Joe's shrimp sautéed in black garlic, peri-peri pepper, salt, pepper and olive oil with tomato bread using the patatas bravas sauce from tonight's dinner prepared ahead of time and the baguette from TK chicken on Saturday. A great meal with a hugely spicy and utterly ridiculous shrimp tapa-style presentation. Crap on a stick, this was G.O.O.D and we'll be having it again.

The wine pairing sucked eggs, though (my first and last On Golden Pond reference ever). Started with a 2009 Raventos Perfum de vi Blanc ($20 - Red & White) because we were unaware of the spice level and utter balls of the shrimp preparation and, predictably, it turned to water with the food and we put it away. The 2009 Skouras Moschofilero ($13 - WDC) performed a wee bit better and even fell into the realm of acceptable in many ways with its lemon rind notes freshening things up. Both were chilled and an experimentation with a red was right out! We were fine and good with the food on a Frozen Food Sunday. Pairing Score: 83.

#109 - Thomas Keller Chicken & Two Cheeses With '05 Fichet Auxey Duresses

Birthday Chicken!

We had a birthday in the Ney house yesterday. Now, usually going out for birthdays is right and proper. But both of us couldn't think of anything more awful than going out to enjoy ourselves and celebrate something than doing it on a Saturday night.

The horror!

So...home dinner. We like that best. We like our home food best, especially given the prospect of navigating Saturday night crowds, traffic and just the general weekend annoyance. Kinda food snobby but we're okay with that.

And Thomas Keller Chicken has become our meatloaf. This is the seventh time we've had it since early June. Because...especially with white Burgundy...I just can't think of something more delicious. I start to ruminate about the best bites of food with wine I've ever had when trying to think of comparisons. Just bites of food, certain elements of dishes that worked beautifully with wine. This is the whole enchilada. The entire meal that sits right up against those best bites.

It's worthy of a birthday dinner.

Food: Thomas Keller chicken, Brillat-Savarin & Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk Cheese with baguette and a mâche and lemon balm salad

Typically great chicken. Beautiful salt level that was playful and just aggressive enough with the crispy skin. A touch more herby this time, or at least the herbs showed up more in individual bites.

Delice de bourgogne has been the standard-bearer for this meal in the past. Its creaminess with just enough funk lends an elegance and Frenchiness to the meal that's just the tops. With good baguette and TK chicken, it equals my current favorite meal.

So...variations on the delice de bourgogne style has been the thought du jour lately. Gave Port Salud a go with Pinot Blanc in mid-July. Meh. Good enough. Worked with the wine in an otherwise forgettable pairing. Staying within the cow's milk, soft to semi-soft and a touch of funk theme, we went with a Brillat-Savarin from Normandy and a Red Hawk cheese from Cowgirl Creamery in Sonoma, California.

The Brillat-Savarin won the night in the cheese category. Very soft, light on its feet, complex yet focused with an almost palate cleansing salty effect on the finish. Flashes of subtle funk that went in and out - the kind of easily accessible, welcome funk that resembled the whiff of a horse pen in a good way, the kind of smell that's carried by the wind on a farm, hits your nose and then goes on its merry way.

The Red Hawk never got out of the realm of curiosity for us. A much denser cheese here with a funk that resembled a yogurt-drenched wash cloth that fell between the washer and dryer and wasn't found for weeks afterward. Something certainly biological going on here. Not really our bag but enjoyed the first few bites as something interesting and even good at times.

A mâche and lemon balm salad with a white wine vinaigrette to finish.

Wine: 2005 Jean-Philippe Fichet Auxey Duresses ($35 - Binny's)

Grape: 100% Chardonnay

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

Vintage (WS): 93 Charming, fleshy whites with juicy acidity and ripe fruit flavors; many are enjoyable now, but the best will age. More variable in Chablis

Just a month ago, we had TK chicken with a 2006 Jean-Philippe Fichet Auxey Duresses. You can read all about him and the wine there.

We promised to follow Mr. Fichet and last night, we kept our promise.

Two different wines for sure. Where the 2006 showed a core of pear/baked apple and a mid-palate beaming with a ultra-fine minerality, last night's 2005 was all pineapple cream with a rough-crushed stone minerality that also dominated the mid-palate. Wonderful depth with the 2005, more so than the 2006 in some ways as there was a more rough-and-tumble complexity that constantly changed, revealing different tropical fruit layers and a touch of vanilla on a long finish. Sits beautifully long after taking a sip with a fine gaseous residue that flutters so nicely.

Loved, loved, loved it. Comparing the years, the 2006 might have my heart with its more subtle beauty but the 2005 has a burly charm to it that can't be denied. If I had to choose which one on a particular night if both were under our roof, it would come down to mood.

I'm already looking forward to the 2007. Great wines in a great price range. We were indoctrinated to white Burgundy by the right winemakers and are quickly falling completely head over heels for them.

Pairing: 93 Just below the 2006 pairing but nonetheless spectacular

The finesse of the 2006 compared to the last night's 2005 probably wins by a hair as both of us.

We enjoyed the chicken a wee bit more last month with the 2006 as its subtlety allowed the chicken's inherent deliciousness to come through, or at least didn't stand in the way. It played nicer, gently wrapping itself around the chicken instead of having two big personalities in the room that got along swimmingly but still left a feeling that the bond came about in a rather clumsy manner.

And the simplicity (or maybe familiarity) of the meal with the 2006 allowed us to sit back and enjoy the nuances more.

A lot going on last night. Various levels of cheesy funk along with the burliness of the 2005 made for a large playing field that had to be digested and figured out.

That said, the wine with the Brillat-Savarin was gorgeous and the lemon balm at the end with the wine couldn't have been a better capper.

A great birthday meal without the Saturday night, dining-out stupidity.

#108 - Lamb Shank In Mole With '07 Vallado Reserva Field Blend

Hey!

We're staying there in a few weeks!

Like AT this winery. That's pretty neat.

I'm sure there will be reports.

On another note, the '04 Yalumba HP Shiraz-Viognier from last week got the wine preservation treatment (a Harvey Steiman recommendation - he's good and likes wine). While nothing to write home about, all the wood was gone and even some marginally vibrant fruit perked up on occasion even after a week.

50 disks for $20 at KL Wines. Entirely worth it.

Food: Lamb shank in mole with corn polenta and mint snap peas

Exact same preparation as the duck in mole with '04 Quinta do Vale Meão. From that write-up:

Mrs. Ney whipped up a mole imparting huge earth and dark chocolate notes with a hint of brightness. A modified Rick Bayless recipe, she substituted oranges for tomatillos, apricots and cherries for raisins, corn tortillas for white bread and 85% cacao for Mexican chocolate with a squirt of honey and a glop of miso paste.

Seemed apt with a Portuguese red in a similar vein. Didn't turn out to be similar from the wine side of things but it still worked in solidly delicious ways.

Tasty corn polenta that made me wonder why we don't eat it more. Farro was an option but it only would have darkened things up even more. The polenta served as a great contrast with its subtle brightness.

Mint snap peas because it's lamb. Mint and lamb = good.

On the lamb, this preparation gave lamb shank a go. While tasty and, at times, delicious, we're talking about a lot of fat with the essence of lamb only half coming through. Some bites were delicious but working around the fat only made us want proper lamb rack even more. It had a pork belly feel to it. Good in small doses and delicious as an appetizer in a succulent sauce but as an entrée...pass. Good in small doses, great at times, marginally fatty and boring as a centerpiece.

But the wine brought everything on the plate together, even if the wine may have never got out of the realm of an idiosyncratic wonder.

Wine: 2007 Quinta do Vallado Reserva Field Blend ($60 - Binny's)

Grapes: Tinta Roriz, Tinta Amarela, Touriga Franca, Touriga Nacional and Sousão

Vintage (WS): 96 A cool, wet spring and summer cut yields by 20 percent, but ideal harvest weather delivered optimal ripeness

A little over a two hour decant and could have used three hours or more.

Mostly because an hour into the meal, the wine started to open up. Scorched earth on the nose and all Portugal in many ways. A jumble of undistinguished mixed darker red berry fruits on the palate with a huge expression of burnt coffee right away that tasted like someone tried to cover it up with caramel syrup. With that as a starting point, the coffee notes changed dramatically throughout the meal, going from a milk chocolate mocha to its best point, a caramel latte that showed up right as we were finishing the bottle. All that mixed quite nicely with a twiggy campfire quality that integrated itself quite nicely. Hints of sweet tannins but dry overall as good Portuguese reds tend to be.

We alternated between thinking this wasn't anything special in the beginning to growing quite fond of it as it opened up in the decanter. A lot of grace here that's probably not for everyone but, as I said, it's all Portugal in some of the best ways. There's an austerity, even after it opened up, that's puzzling but if open to it, the wine rewards in spades. A lot of smoke, decent amount of fig and enough Asian spice that kept us coming back, if only to figure it out.

I have fond memories of this wine a day after drinking it even though I was completely vexed by it during the first half of the meal.

Pairing: 89 A perfect example of the food on the plate coming together because of the wine

It's not like the food particularly needed it. Everything was in place. But with the wine, the lamb, mole, polenta, snap peas and mint became complete dish full of integrated flavor once a sip of wine was introduced.

That's not to say the pairing overall was anything special. It wasn't, really. But with lamb shank that we weren't terribly excited about and sides served to complement the shank, the wine served as something that brought together each element and turned it into a surprisingly cohesive meal. Should have been cohesive, sure. Nothing was out of left field in any way. But the level to which it reached surprised us. Tasted...intentional with the wine.

As for individual elements, only the polenta really stood out, allowing the fruit to come out more in the wine, something that was more muted than we thought should have been/are used to with good Portuguese reds.

Good stuff, entirely interesting, all Portugal. $60? Um...yeah...maybe. Gotta really want it get to know it, though.

Quick note: Semiramis with Mrs. Ney's co-workers and two wines. 2009 Crios Rosé of Malbec ($11 - Whole Foods) and 2008 Montecillo Verdmar Albariño Rias Baixas ($11 - Binny's), two bottles that have been sitting around and we were sick of looking at them.

Both were serviceable with the food (standard Lebanese spread) with the Crios probably playing more nicely than the Montecillo. Could have gone through three bottles of Crios easily. Susanna Balbo is some kind of crazy genius. A lot of substance with this one with an even mixture of strawberry and cherry fruit followed by an easy, open and expressive finish. Unbelievably solid stuff. The Montecillo Albariño was a nice contrast from the rosé and sparkling we had (can't remember the name - brought by someone else, good and was a Blancs de Noirs, IIRC). Tasted like unsweetened old orange juice, but in a good way. Or a weirdly tasty Chinese orange drink bought at a Asian grocery store. Don't really need the Montecillo again but the Crios Rosé of Malbec will be purchased again quite soon.

#107 - Harissa-Marinated Bison Flank Steak & Two Wines

Two days ago, I did a wildly detailed spreadsheet inventory of our wines.

The side-effect of it was seeing the number of wines that probably should have been drunk years ago. Fewer than I thought as we try to keep good tabs on such things but I can't recommend a non-vintage Trialeti Akhashini Georgian (the country) red wine bought probably three years ago and very well could have been eight-nine years old. Tasted like bugs.

I'm guessing the 2004 Toasted Head is on a similar path without the buggy bugginess.

But a surprise in the older/"drink me now! Geesh!" vein was drunk last night, a wine that thoroughly outperformed a wine that we just adore and was also approaching its demise.

Food: Harissa-marinated bison flank steak, sweet potatoes and frisée

In June, we went a little darker, big and Frenchy with bison flank steak, using a Chris Cosentino marinade containing junipers, balsamic and black pepper. Following this recipe last night (bison for tri-tip) , the bison came off insanely bright in a great way.

Using Whole Foods harissa paste - a product that has the freakin' goods - garlic, salt, pepper, olive oil and sherry vinegar, the result was meat with flavor that jumped in our mouth, staying perfectly bright and sunny and allowing the bison flavor to completely come through. Turned into a surprisingly light meal and for $12 a pound, bison's always a perfectly delicious option.

Served with honey, cardamom and ginger sweet potatoes and a frisée salad with a toasted cumin seed/za'atar vinaigrette. A North African/Middle Eastern/Maghrebian/Levantian extravaganza in many ways. Except bison. Not many bison in the Middle East.

Wine: 2004 Yalumba Hand-Picked Shiraz-Viognier ($30 - Sam's) & 2006 Rosenblum Cellars Mourvèdre ($11 - Binny's)

We were under the assumption during the meal that the Yalumba we were popped last night was the same vintage as the wine we drank with what was probably the best food and wine pairing we've had in the last year. It wasn't. And thank all that is holy. It solves a riddle knowing that it wasn't the 2004 Yalumba HP Shiraz-Viognier with the Asian beef filet. It was the 2005. It would have been odd to see such a dramatic change in just a few months and would have forced me to buy a larger wine fridge right now. Money saved!

The 2004 Yalumba by most estimates is approaching the end of its drinking window and that's what we got last night along with a wall of tailing oak. Very concentrated cherry and herb core right away that disappeared in a split second, then settled into a medium-bodied, rather ordinary wine that was drinkable but not particularly distinguished. Then the oak bomb came. Every other sip was like chewing on a piece of dry wood that's sat out in the hot sun for years. Tannins were tired and the wine overall just came across as weary and creaky. Drinkable but geriatric. We missed the golden years with this one.

So we popped a second bottle, a 2006 Rosenblum Mourvèdre (with a touch of Carignane) made in Contra Costa County, just northeast of the Bay Area. Rosenblum wines are everywhere, in grocery stores, liquor stores and corner markets. And I'm quickly coming to the realization that that's a good thing. This was the second or third Rosenblum wine we've had and they seem to be quality performers at a great price point.

A cloudy red in the glass with a floral violet note on the palate mixing with a solid core of red and black raspberry and maybe a bit of bee pollen. Fine structure and played well above its price tag in some great ways. Probably would have been better two years ago but seemed to be still going strong enough.

Pairing: 85 Boring with the Yalumba, Surprising and good with the Rosenblum

The Rosenblum mingled beautifully with the bright bison and just soared with the cumin seed. Mental note: Cumin and Mourvèdre.

While the Yalumba was clumsy and tired, the Rosenblum saved the night. It would have been sad to see such a wine fail with meat of this caliber but the Rosenblum came to the rescue and served us admirably.

#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.

#105 - Lola-Style Skirt Steak & Yuca Fries With '05 Colonial Estate Envoy

Sometimes, good enough is actually welcome...

...welcome because of what didn't happen to the food and wine compared to what did.

It wasn't great. The wine was a little short and a little muddled but there was much to recommend, like watching a perfectly pleasant little movie that never made you feel like you wasted your time while watching it even though you probably wouldn't ever dare to watch it again lest the shine wear off quickly or you find a reason to absolutely hate it.

Last night's pairing was akin to watching the movie Once.

Food: Skirt steak with pickled onions and pickled jalapeños with yuca fries and a arugula/parsley salad with pomegranate seeds and Lola steak sauce

Salt-sugar-coriander-ancho chile powder-rubbed and marinated Paulina skirt steak with pickled onions and pickled jalapeños on top and Lola steak sauce to drizzle over the top.

A Michael Symon hanger steak recipe.

I had a completely random, out-of-the-blue Lola Bistro hanger steak craving and Mrs. Ney mimicked it, substituting skirt. We've had it at Lola twice now (chronicled here and here) and it's why food is good. Topped with Lola steak sauce that brings a beautifully silky, low-level acid that ties the pickled elements to the meat in a great way. And more pickled elements will be showing up on the plate in the Ney house with attempts to marry them with silky sauce. Just great stuff that made the skirt come off very light, clean and fresh.

Yuca fries with spicy mayo for dipping = staple and it had been awhile since the last time we had them.

Arugula and parsley salad with pomegranate seeds. Pomegranate because they had to be used up and pomegranate was in the wine tasting notes. Parsley because it's become oddly essential in our world and is freakin' delicious with skirt steak. Who knew?

A meal that completely satisfied the Lola hanger craving and made us feel happy. And easy-squeezy to make. Not fancy-foo-foo.

Wine: 2005 Colonial Estate Envoy ($20, down from $40 two years ago - WDC)

Grape: Grenache, Syrah, Mourvèdre

Region: Barossa Valley in Australia

Vintage (WS): 97 Ideal weather made balanced, generous wines

We bought three bottles of this one two years ago after a 50% markdown was too irresistible to pass up at Wine Discount Center. It's shown a dramatic arc in the last two years of drinking them.

Close to finished now as it's lost most of its interesting depth and the fruit has turned from a more intense darkish fruit to something resembling macerated red fruits that have sat out for a bit.

Short finish and the fruit isn't particularly lively but the structure was still there, if hanging on for dear life. A bit gamey on the nose showing slightly dried dark cherry on the palate mixing with something a bit tobacco-y. Had a very abrupt, Frank Costanza-like "stop short" halfway down, leaving the finish a tad empty and hollow with a very slight perk-up way down at the bottom.

Fine enough but we're glad it was our last bottle. Fun to see how it matured but it's old and gray now and dangerously close to smelling like an old person who pushes ribbon candy on unsuspecting visitors.

But for all that, it was a gamer with the food.

Pairing: 88 The old dog still had some game in those creaky legs

With tons of pickling and big skirt flavors on the plate, the wheels of the bus never really fell off and even slightly enhanced some things.

It was kind of like putting together a jigsaw puzzle. With the skirt and pickled jalapeño with a touch of sauce, the wine's fruit dominated in almost pretty way. Add some pickled onion in the mix and...not so much. But with the former, the wine was better and the sauce's inherent goodness really shined.

Overall, the wine was probably best with the yuca fries and mayo, something that showed itself to be true in the past with Australian wines. They're a nice match with Australia's more fruit-forwardness but this was a more subtle GSM compared to a Shiraz and it still produced the same effect. Something about the crispy element mixed with a little spice forced the wine to reveal itself very early in the mouth. It woke it up and even seemed to take a few years off it.

It may have been ever so slightly dull at times and we wouldn't do a match with this wine's vintage again but a lot could have gone wrong and it didn't.

I tried to watch a few minutes of Once a couple of months ago on HBO and had to turn it right away. Something was being destroyed. My memory of the experience of watching it the first time was being rotted and I started to see it through a more critical eye. The pairing last night, I suspect, would have a similar effect if we did it again.

We found a nice place with the wine and food and we'll just leave it right where we left it.