What Would Don Quixote Drink?
Last night, my Spanish discussion group came over to my house for dinner and conversation about the essay España según Don Quijote. I opened Strub's 2003 Riesling 'Niersteiner' - $16 in the bigger, happier, longer-lasting liter bottle. It's not very Spanish, but it was damned good - particularly with the Valdeón cheese and fig cake that my friend Michelle brought from the Pasta Shop. Actually, I got started on that liter before the guests arrived, as I was madly chopping vegetables for a quite quixote-esque pisto manchego. Riesling liters are great that way - they can take you from cooking to aperitif to dinner to cheese with nary a hiccup.
Pisto manchego, by the way, is a vegetable stew from Quixote's region of La Mancha - "manchego" being the adjectival form denoting anything or anyone from La Mancha, including the famous Manchego cheese. (If you want a recipe for pisto manchego, come by the store and ask me.)
So this evening, Cheryl and I warmed up some of the leftover pisto. "What would Don Quixote drink with this?", I wondered. Probably not riesling. Probably a nice, everyday tinto from La Mancha, like the excellent $15 bottle we have in the store but whose name escapes me at the moment. Or maybe he would've brought back from his travels something like the Balbas 2003 Ribera del Duero 'Tradición' ($13.99). All I can say is that it worked for us. This young Ribera has intensity and depth, but without the animal, gamy qualities of some or the overt oakiness of others. (Not that there's anything wrong with those qualities, but they're not what I'd want with a simple vegetable stew.) So here's an everyday Ribera del Duero that won't overwhelm lighter fare - or weigh down a knight errant before his next adventure.
Pisto manchego, by the way, is a vegetable stew from Quixote's region of La Mancha - "manchego" being the adjectival form denoting anything or anyone from La Mancha, including the famous Manchego cheese. (If you want a recipe for pisto manchego, come by the store and ask me.)
So this evening, Cheryl and I warmed up some of the leftover pisto. "What would Don Quixote drink with this?", I wondered. Probably not riesling. Probably a nice, everyday tinto from La Mancha, like the excellent $15 bottle we have in the store but whose name escapes me at the moment. Or maybe he would've brought back from his travels something like the Balbas 2003 Ribera del Duero 'Tradición' ($13.99). All I can say is that it worked for us. This young Ribera has intensity and depth, but without the animal, gamy qualities of some or the overt oakiness of others. (Not that there's anything wrong with those qualities, but they're not what I'd want with a simple vegetable stew.) So here's an everyday Ribera del Duero that won't overwhelm lighter fare - or weigh down a knight errant before his next adventure.
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