Hi all,
I have a question about matching food to wine. Hopefully this is the best place.
I am going to a tasting of older/old rioja. Really wonderful wines from CUNE and Lopez de Heredia.
I want to take some great food to go with these beauties.
Any ideas of the optimal match?
I would have put this in the epicurean section but this is more about these specific wines than the food.
Thanks in advance.
To me, old Riojas would pair wonderfully with game. Venison, elk, wild boar. Simply prepared.
Those work great, as does lamb and beef.
Just bring a shitload of manchego cheese of widely varying ages so you can see how each cheese goes it’s best friend tempranillo
Iberico!
I am all on board with the game suggestion. Have paired it several times with game - boar roast, elk, blackbuck deer etc. Tried it with pheasant but a Bordeaux would have been better.
and then a great cigar
which wines/years?
I did a Rioja dinner and the proteins were beef, pigeon and venison. All worked quite well.
It’s repeatedly struck me that Peter Yi (of PJ Wines), who seems pretty fanatical about Rioja and food pairings, likes to recommend increasingly more delicate foods with the reds, the longer they age. Eventually, fish. e.g. an excerpt from this page:
CVNE “Vina Real” 1964, Rioja, Spain: For years Peter Yi has been telling me about the potential aged Rioja has to pair with fish, and for years I’ve nodded politely. OK Peter, you win. There is a restaurant in San Sebastian that wine lovers know has one of the best cellars in the world, which is exactly where I tasted this VR along with numerous seafood based courses. It was one of the best food/wine experiences of my life. Raspberries, dill, balsamic and…energy. Aged wines can be something special; their years earning them a light body and heavy expression.
I can’t attest from firsthand experience (it has intuitive appeal, but I’ve only had one or two experiences with really mature red Rioja); I mention it because it’s fascinatingly opposite the suggestions above.
My rule for Rioja (given to me by an expert friend ITB) is the younger the bottle is, the fattier the meat should be. One of the weirdest pairings I ever enjoyed was an '01 Alta 904 GR with pork adobo.
I know Peter pretty well. He tastes a lot of wine. Not sure I’d buy everything he said, although I’ve often had old Rioja with fish. That’s because I like fish and I like Rioja.
Don - I’ve had wines from both wineries dating back to the forties with the owners of LdH and the person who made the wine at CVNE for thirty years. As I recall, it was usually lamb or pork. Chuletas, or basically baby chops, very lean and grilled over fire. But I drink those wines a lot and a great pairing is mushrooms. Grilled portobello, or broiled with some cheese, etc. Or what I had last night with my Rioja - sauteed with some shallots and tossed with some pasta, truffle oil, and grated Romano.
Definitely lamb for me. The simpler the recipe, the better.
Definitely no cheese.
Bellota or other Iberico ham is good, but not great in my view (we had that a few times). The best combination with Bellota ham for me is sparkling wine, Cava or Champagne.
Lamb is fine in my view, but I’d also go with something very delicate, so e.g. milk lamb, veal sweetbreads, suckling pig. In my experience vegetables with earthy flavors work well, too. Black radish, beetroot or potatoes.
Agreed.
Thanks so much for the suggestions thus far. I will post a list of the wines today when I get a moment.
jamon iberico de bellota
Oh and FWIW, a few years ago I went out with some friends to a great restaurant in NYC. They had a deal where people in the wine business could bring whatever they wanted on Mondays, so we all brought older Spanish wines, mostly Rioja. I had talked to the chef and somm ahead of time and we agreed that the chef would just do what he thought worked best with each of the 10 wines. Dish after dish after dish was fish after fish after fish. Finally I went back and told him, “Not for nothing old buddy, but you do realize what we’re drinking, right?” “Yeah,” he said. “I just thought fish would be kind of interesting.”
The food was good, he was cool and truth be told, some of the dishes were just fine. But I don’t know anyone in Rioja who would do that.
We drink a lot of Old Rioja in Puerto Rico. It was one of the first wines that the maverick collectors starting cellaring and there is still a lot of it around in great shape.
I would go lighter on the menu as these wines have mostly shed their structure and are all about the elegance and tertiary elements. We tend to go with pulpo a la gallega, merluza a la romana, egg dishes, and lightly fried croquettes and fish.
Enjoy! They can be glorious wines.
I will not speak for all of Rioja, nor even Rioja itself. In Rioja itself, I like my aged reds with chuletón and other regional specialties including that terrific Riojan Bean stew and even the simple-sounding but delicious patatas a la Riojana.
But just an hour or 2 north of Rioja Alavesa towards and in the cities of San Sebastian and Bilbao. Here, countless of pintxos bars and exquisite fine-dining restaurants abound. Bar-tends at the excellent pintxos bars are quick to pour Riojan reds even with the seafood-based pintxos that they will serve. Of course, they will also ask if you prefer a glass of cava or txakoli. But in fine-dining establishments like Etxebarri and El Rekondo (I think this is the restaurant that Peter above may have referred to), the sommeliers would not balk at suggesting an old Rioja red from their robust cellars to go with some of the fish-based dishes that they’re serving that day.