Rose and almond crusted grilled chicken

Today was the last day of the Oregon Brewers Festival and I had volunteered to pour beer on the 12:00 to 3:30 shift. I was initially pouring Collaborator Bock, but there was some confusion on which taps had which beer and I ended up pouring Terminal Gravity Triple most of the time. TG’s triple isn’t a Belgian style triple, but is a more traditional American strong ale that comes ion at 8.4% alcohol and has 45 IBUs, which puts it lower than most IPA’s and pale ales. The festival must have gone well because by about 3:00 we were out of most of the beers on our trailer. After my shift, I did stick around to have a few tastes of beer, but the pickings were slim. I re-tasted the Laurelwood PNW pilsner and reconfirmed my feelings about it: it’s an imperial pilsner hopped to the higher hopping rates we like here in the NW. I’ll stick to my assessment; it’s a good beer that’s a hybrid of styles, but may be a little disappointing to pils fans. IPA and NW beer fans will likely continue to revel in it. The lines were getting long so I finished up with a Hopworks IPA. It’s a very nice beer and I look forward to tasting more of their beers when they officially open.

Being a little burned out on beer at this point (I know that sounds kind of odd, but it was true), I picked up a bottle of Esencia Valdemar Rioja Rose at the supermarket for $7. No style of wine can cause more fisticuffs among wine snobs than rose. Many wine drinkers avoid them all together, because they consider roses to be pedestrian wines made for kool-aid drinkers. There are many sweet roses on the market, typified by the White Zinfandels that came out in the 1980’s and were off-dry but did capture a new market for the wine world. But rose can be so much more than white zin, and typically they are.

I will come down strongly on the pro-rose side of the argument. I think that nothing beats a great rose with simple grilled foods. Great rose normally has several characteristics, which include strawberry or red berry fruit flavors, good acidity which makes them fruity, clean and crisp, and the very slightest hint of tannins that gives them just a little more body than your average white wine. Rose isn’t a “serious” wine, but great rose doesn’t pretend to be. Great rose isn’t for collecting; it’s for drinking.

The Esencia Valdemar is 100% Grenache from Spain’s famous Rioja region which is best known for its phenomenal red wines. This particular wine is from the same estate that produces the impressive Conde de Valdemar Riojas. This wine has wonderfully fresh strawberry and raspberry notes in the nose. On the palate it has good fruit and good acidity to help it finish crisp. The strawberry fruit lasts well into the finish. In short, it’s everything good rose should be.

I had planed on grilling some chicken breast and came up with an easy menu when I was pouring beer at the festival. The chicken breast would be crusted in almond flour, pimenton, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cinnamon. On the side, there would be the seemingly ubiquitous roasted potatoes with thyme (and also some onions this times as well) and more sautéed zucchini with garlic, basil, and the first of our tomatoes from the garden. Simple food but from quality ingredients. What better than simple, refreshing wine like good rose?

The wine and food were a near perect match. This was designed as an easy, simple meal to be enjoyed leisurely at home after a hectic weekend of attending a crowded beer festival. It wasn’t meant to be a gourmet meal that required a lot of work on the part of the cook and the diner. After this weekend I didn’t want a cerebral meal. I wanted something that was well prepared and tasted good, but didn’t demand too much. There was no “genius” in this meal and it didn’t require a culinary education to appreciate it. It was proof that a good meal needn’t be hard or original, it only needs to taste good and make everyone who eats it feel good, and that’s what this meal did.