Today's post is another where I (help) make dinner and then serve a paired wine with it. Having abandoned the name "Dinner and a Movie," seeing as the past few of these so-called "Dinner and a Movie" segments have not actually included a movie, the segment is now called "Cellar & Stove." Also, I dare not tarnish the memory of that mid-nineties television gem Dinner and a Movie, starring chef Claude Mann and comedic duo Paul Gilmartin and Annabelle Gurwitch. Ah, TBS.
Recently I was visiting my folks in Connecticut, and so naturally we had to make a fancy dinner. Tonight's dish, created with the expertise of Jayne Collins, my aunt (and mobile web dev extraordinaire!) is herb-crusted Frenched racks of lamb, served with roasted garlic mashed red potatoes and cauliflower roasted in a lemon mustard sauce. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? So we'll need an equally-amazing wine.
Since we're working with lots of tangy flavors here - mustard, garlic, and lemon - I'm looking for a wine that's ripe and full-bodied, to stand up to those citrus / mustard flavors, but also isn't exceptionally sharp or tannic, to not interfere with the appreciation of said flavors. And since I know that Australian syrah (or shiraz) is a medium- to full-bodied red, with some tangy capabilities, I chose a 2009 bottle of shiraz from 2Fly Vineyards from the cellar.
So now that we have our wine, it's time to make food. The first step was to brown the lamb racks. While that's happening, Jayne made an herb paste of parsley, garlic, rosemary, and thyme.
Next step, once those are browned, is to anoint the lamb in the herb mixture.
And then we roasted the racks for 25 minutes total. While the lamb was roasting - the wine was breathing. Tonight's wine, as mentioned, is a 2009 Australian shiraz from 2Fly Vineyards, which was one of my first reviews ever! Let's dive in.
It pours rather nicely, with no real aroma to speak of. It's garnet-colored in the glass with a nice color when candled.
I like the flavors of dark fruit with no alcohol tastes present. The flavors were muted, especially on the finish where it was almost hard to get any flavor. According to my review from December 2012, the wine was "deep and plummy but not overly tart or dry." Well, not much has changed in terms of the latter two; today's wine isn't tart or dry at all. It has a pleasant texture. But back in '12, the flavors were "deep and plummy...peppery and ripe." I think certainly this wine has shown its age in that regard. I wouldn't call today's wine "deep" but it does retain some of those plum / dark fruit tastes.
What's great about drinking this wine now is that I can see how it's aged for over the past few years. Most wines I buy, I can only get one bottle - and so I think this may be the first time I have reviewed an identical vintage twice, with comparisons over the years. And in that vein, I think I wouldn't have waited so long to have it. I kinda miss that up-front fruitiness that the 2012 tasting held, and although the 2015 tasting was good, it didn't have that same peppery ripeness that I was hoping for. Still - it was a delicious pairing and I would love to investigate Aussie red wines in the future.
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