Harmony on Java Street: Lisa’s Lamb Tagine and Contino 2000 Reserva
Rioja Superstar: Jesus Madrazo of Contino, September 14, 2007. Photo: John Barkley.
During our second hot air balloon flight over Rioja, when we were up higher than we had any damn right to be, I noticed our pilot Laureano turning his ear toward the sounds of unseen aircraft in the distance with a slightly worried expression on his face. I thought to myself, man, that would really suck if we get clipped by a plane right now.
Which made our visit to Bodegas Contino in Laserna, the first appointment on our docket after our early-morning, high-altitude brush with eternity, a particularly sweet reaffirmation of life.
It’s hard to think of a better way to celebrate life than raising a glass of Contino. Jesus Madrazo, winemaker at Contino and a member of the family that founded CVNE, Contino’s parent company, is one of Rioja’s unmitigated superstars, and his wines are spectacular.
I plan to devote a series of posts to Contino in the coming weeks but let me start by saying that I picked up a bottle of Contino 2000 Reserva at Tinto Fino to bring to a dinner party in Greenpoint Brooklyn last night, and I was just floored by how good it was.
The 2000 Reserva is the bodegas’ entry-level wine from a vintage more often than not overshadowed by the buzz-heavy 2001’s. It retails for around $40. Since I’ve had some experience with the 2000 vintage, and I remembered Mr. Madrazo characterizing that year’s product as a “shy vintage” at a New York City tasting earlier this year, I asked Billy, our host, to decant the bottle I brought over an hour before we hit it.
The gods of food and wine harmony must have been smiling favorably upon us last night, because it just so happened that Billy’s wife, Lisa, a former colleague of mine at Chanterelle who is as radiant in personality as she is talented at the stove, had prepared a lamb tagine flavored with cardamom, cumin, and dried fruit, served with Israeli couscous and wilted spinach, and, oh mercy me, while a cold and miserable rain fell outside on Java Street, I think we might have found ourselves a pairing for the ages.
More on Contino tomorrow, possibly even Lisa’s recipe, if I can persuade her to part with it.
November 23rd, 2008 at 12:10 am
[...] vehicle for this squirt-in-the-mouth summer bounty. You might recall that I was a beneficiary of Lisa Leonard-Lee’s dynamite lamb tagine last winter. When, a day or two later I asked her for the recipe, she cooked it again (!) to test the recipe [...]