Roast Chicken, Romesco, and Rioja Gran Reserva
I started yesterday’s blog post talking about dinner the previous night at Butter, but I never mentioned what I had for dinner.
First, a little background: on Sunday night, I watched Anthony Bourdain’s “No Reservations” on the Travel Channel and in that particular episode, Bourdain was in Spain, attending a Calçotada somewhere in Catalunya. A Calçotada is a seasonal event in northeastern Spain that involves friends, family, much wine, and the ritual preparation and enthusiastic consumption of grilled spring onions (calçots) dipped in Romesco sauce and swallowed like a chick downing a live worm: carefully, methodically, and in one long matiscating gulp.
So when I saw that Butter had on the menu ‘Oven Roasted Chicken with Grilled Scallions and Romesco sauce,’ I knew precisely what I would be ordering. It was lovely. Not as lovely, perhaps, as spit-roasted yardbird with true spring onions would be, but the dish did the trick.
I diligently ordered an aged Rioja off the wine list, Coto de Imaz Rioja Gran Reserva 1996 ($69), from the bodega, El Coto de Rioja
. I took the opportunity during a lull in the conversation, midway through our main courses, to go over the Rioja we had tasted that night. (During a press dinner on behalf of a wine region, one does not want to engage in anything approaching a hard sell, as the move would convey transparently a rushed and all-business approach; better to wait for the correct moment and slide in a heartfelt presentation inconspicuously, with food of course.)
We had discussed the aromatic hallmarks of American oak and the “Traditional vs. Modern” debate earlier in the meal, so this was a good moment to bring it all home: the 100% Tempranillo Coto de Imaz Gran Reserva practically oozed with vanilla and cedar (meaning that once-vegetal aromatic remnants imparted by the American oak barrels used to age the wine had softened into something far more alluring and elegant) and the palate was full of blackberries and cherries and was warm and lively and long and went very, very well with my chicken dish, as I imagine it would have equally had I ordered either the steak or the lamb.
What this also demonstrated was that the classic style is still very much alive in Rioja, even at a winery that had fairly recently overhauled and modernized its fermentation process, in 1996.
The upshot being twofold: in a simple explanation, what we were enjoying with our food was classic Rioja.
In a more nuanced view, the bodega that had produced this classic style had in fact no shortage of modern elements in its winemaking arsenal, which is quite more typical than a simple black-and-white, Modern-vs.-Classic dichotomy.
El Coto de Rioja Coto de Imaz Rioja Gran Reserva 1996 is on sale for $31.29 at the International Wine Shop is Westport, CT. Some restrictions and delivery charges apply.