Perfect wine pairing for Zankou Chicken?
So if you live in Hollywood, you’ve probably crossed paths with Zankou Chicken, a Lebanese joint that serves some of the finest, most fattening spit-roasted, garlic-laden poultry this side of…this side of Sepulveda. Anyhow, Zankou Chicken is pretty cheap, like stuff your face for under $6 cheap. But does that mean it deserves to be paired with an equally easy-on-the-wallet wine? Let’s find out!
Our pairing with this decadent Middle Eastern fare? One of our favorite Sonoma producers, Pax Cellars, and their 2005 white Rhone “Venus” cuvée, which is 100% Roussanne from Bennett Valley. The only retailer listing the wine on Wine-Searcher is a place in Georgia (?), for $75. We paid closer to $60 direct from the winery, though our memory is a little fuzzy.
The nose on the wine is very rich — buttery and honeyed. Not surprisingly, the winery notes say this was aged in 40% new French oak, and this could indeed be a victim of the Vaynerchuk Oak Monster. It almost smells botryitis-y, but is clearly isn’t a sweet wine. Nearside of cloying on the nose, still.
And not much different on the palate. We’re not sure we’ve developed a taste for Rousanne, or whether it’s just this Rousanne that’s bothering us (as we’ve read, Rousanne is meant to be a little more on the acidic side and this wine is anything but). We don’t get the figs or the honeydew suggested by the winery notes, but rather a little bit of petrol (which we’ve tasted in spades in certain Rieslings) and maybe a teeny tiny bit of candied ginger (wish there was more of the latter).
Of course, the real purpose of this whole experiment is to try the food and wine together, to see if $6 chicken can stand up to $60 wine. The spicy elements and fattiness of the chicken skin do a little bit to cut through the almost syrupy wine. But not enough. We might have been better off with a slightly more acidic wine here (that’s what we’d been expecting from the Venus); we’re talking wines like the Palacios “As Sortes” Godello ($32) that we love so much; or the Au Bon Climat Pinot Gris/Pinot Blanc that’s a stand-out at its price ($15).
More or less, it’s looking not so much that we picked the wrong price-point wine for our thrifty Zankou, but that we picked the wrong wine, regardless of price. And, maybe, just maybe, not the wrong wine for this food — but the wrong wine for us.
When it comes down to it, our experiment was conceptually flawed. Pairing food and wine isn’t about what the items cost. And while it’s a little bit about flavor profiles, it’s most definitely about personal taste (perhaps even more so than anything else). Our gimmick of the $6 chicken and the $60 wine was…well, ultimately just a gimmick, and one that didn’t have the results we would have liked: proof that you can pair any food with any wine regardless of cost. It was a clever-ish concept that we hoped would pan out into a clever-ish blog post. Perhaps not so much in either case!
All that said, we don’t regret for one moment opening up a fancy bottle of vino, trying something new, experimenting, and not really liking the result. That just comes with the territory of curiosity and discovery that are a couple of the best things about exploring wine. Though we love Pax, we think we’ll be sticking with their red wines for a while.
(note: after our tasting of this wine, we had Simon of Larchmont taste it; his gut reaction was that it was a white wine made by a vintner used to making red wine, and this further backs up our desire to stay with the Pax reds for the time being.)
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get your wine on
2005 Amavi Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon, Walla Walla
We’re always looking for reasonably priced Cabs, and while this is creeping up there in price, $28 is still more than reasonable for what you get. Concentration of black fruit, some peppery spice, a hint of structure and layers of complexity. While labeled a Cab, this is more a blend, with Cab coming in at 76% and Merlot, Syrah and Malbec making up the balance. I want some Walla Walla
2006 Curran Gewurztraminer, Santa Ynez Valley
We got the chance to try the Curran Gewurztraminer at a winemaker dinner we attended in February, with Kris Curran and Bruno d’Alphonso. We’ve been bugging our sales rep for this wine ever since, and are thrilled that Curran has finally released a tiny amount to retailers. Yay! A perfect wine for the summer.Get some Gewurz for $29.99
2003 Rocca Family Cabernet Sauvignon, Yountville
We heard that Gary V. reviewed the 2004 yesterday and loved it. We loved that wine too, but we jumped at the chance to get the 2003 which we feel is nearly as good, since it’s a bargain at under $50 a bottle. Stellar juice from Celia Masyczek, the winemaker of Scarecrow, for a fraction of the price.2003 Rocca, please!
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freshly pressed
Interview with Wannabe Wino (aka Sonadora…aka Megan):
As we often do when we have a new bloggerpack to shill, we’ve interviewed the blogger in question. Without further ado, the blogger known as Wannabe Wino — our questions are in bold, her answers are not:
When and why did you first decide to plunge into the crazy world of wine blogging? How do you fit it into your work day?
I really hated my first job. At some point in my 8 months of working there, well, really within the first 2 months, I literally reached the very last page of the internet. I swear it exists. Also, because they had eliminated my position at work prior to me even officially arriving, they literally had nothing for me to do, no one talked to me, it was pretty much my own living hell. So the blog was born of sheer and utter boredom and the realization, after reading every last thing about wine on the internet, that no one was talking about the wines I was drinking. You seem to have incredible endurance as well as devotion when it comes to wine drinking (and blogging, of course!). Do you and Matt really open a bottle nearly every night? Who chooses what to drink of the two of you?
We take the ocassional hiatus, but on an average week 5-7 bottles get opened in our house. This week we’re on a hiatus, but it’s almost Friday. We take turns picking what to drink, but generally ask the other one if they would prefer a red or white or base it on what we’re eating for dinner.
I’m finding more trouble fitting blogging into my day-to-day life recently. I carpool to work with Matt and his hours have increased again as of late, limiting my non-content-filtered internet hours even more. I usually write my posts fresh every morning and post them right then. I try to devote time on Saturdays to routine maintainence and such. The hardest thing for me is interacting with other blogs since they are blocked at work, and I’m literally awake for all of 2 hours when we get home.
Also, do you think about what you’re eating first, and pair that with wine, or what you’re drinking first, and then pair that with food? What’s your favorite food and wine pairing of late?
90% of the time I pick the food first. We work fairly long hours, so I tend to only be able to get to the store once a week. Meals are planned on a weekly basis, usually based off what’s on sale and what looks fresh when I get to the store. At the moment I’m really digging Sauvignon Blanc with parmesan baked tilapia.
Besides Cali wines, which you seem to love (and we love you for that), have you discovered any part of the world or wine region that you’re becoming as interested in or excited about? Or are you a California girl now and forever?
I always like a wide variety of wines from lots of different places, but California wines hold a special place in my heart, having been my first real introduction to how great wine can be. Some other perennial favorites are Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand, Chile, and South Africa, and last winter Italian reds were calling my name. I expect Italy will start to play a bigger roll in my wine drinking in the future.
What’s the worst bottle of wine you’ve ever had? Best?
Yellow Tail Riesling was by far the worst “wine” I’ve ever had. The stuff tasted like melted plastic flowers doused in chemicals. It was foul. The best? Now that’s a toughie. I’ve had so many great wines and I just can’t choose one.
Any wine travel planned for the coming year? If you could go anywhere in the wine world, where would it be?
Well, I hope to be able to go to the Wine Blogger Conference in Sonoma this fall…other than that, we’ll probably take our annual trek to CA around Easter. No international travel for the time begin, the dollar sucks. And, as usual, we like to go out to the local VA vineyards on the weekends.
Interview with Wannabe Wino (aka Sonadora…aka Megan)
Price Check: 2005 Protocolo Tinto and 2006 Bodegas Borsao Campo de Borja Red
Coming Soon: The Great Whatsit!
wine jargon
Frizzante
From Wikipedia: Frizzante is an Italian wine term term for semi-sparkling wine (as opposed to Spumante, which is generally used for fully sparkling wines). Frizzante wines generally owe their bubbles to a partial secondary fermentation in tank. You might notice a light fizz or tingly sensation on the tongue with a Frizzante wine, compared to the more carbonated sensation that more fully sparkling wines yield.
Scorekage
Okay, so we made up this word yesterday after a great restaurant experience. We brought a bottle of wine with us, expecting to pay a corkage fee. But the restaurant either forgot to charge us the $15, or decided to be nice to us. We scored! Hence, “scorekage” has entered our lexicon. This can also refer to BYO friendly restaurants that don’t charge for corkage under any circumstances.
grapewise
domaine547 In the News: Los Angeles Business Journal
We’re thrilled to be mentioned in this week’s Los Angeles Business Journal! Check us out either on the LABJ site, or click for the excerpt after the bump.
Blogs to check out: Noble Pig
We’re suckers for food sites with great photography. But there’s a lot more going on at Noble Pig, which is why we read it religiously these days. In addition to great recipes with the aforementioned photographs, the site boasts wine tasting notes (with a shopping list handy via the sidebar), and observational pieces about everyday life outside of the culinary.
domaine547 In the News: Los Angeles Business Journal
Blogs to check out: Noble Pig
Hello Wine blog from Amy Christine
July 24th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Sounds like a not so great Roussanne, for a very steep price! I had a darn tasty one from Roshambo the other night and would describe it as closer to a Chardonnay flavor, but minus any heavy oak.
Chicken sounds divine though, will have to check that out next time we are out to visit the inlaws.
July 24th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Word of advice: if you try Zankou in Hollywood, do take-out as there is no atmosphere. Scratch that. There is negative atmosphere. The other locations are marginally better. But the food travels just fine…
As for the Roussanne? Well, my guess is that it had too much of the imprint of the winemaker (who is fantastic with reds) and not enough of the essence of the grape. Will give yours a try — we visited Roshambo last year and enjoyed the winery.
January 22nd, 2008 at 1:27 am
[…] was the minerally, dry Pecorino. As we drank the wine and ate our food, we were reminded of our attempt last year of pairing a $60 wine with a $6 chicken, back when we popped open the Pax Venus Roussanne to disastrous results. That wine was over-oaked […]