With swimsuit season just around the corner my wife is on a serious "healthy eating" bend.
Normally I don't have a problem with that as we eat fairly healthy already and the change usually means skipping pasta for a few weeks. But this year my wife has decided to cut back, a lot, on red meat.
Since she does the cooking it's hard for me to complain but at least once a week I love a nice steak with a great bottle of red wine. The last fantastic steak/wine combo was a T-bone with the 2007 Flechas Gran Malbec - awesome! But I digress. So now our main protein is chicken and usually that's fine with me but last week it was four straight nights of chicken dishes - even the kids were threatening mutiny! Something had to be done. The kids got off easy with organic hot dogs and French fries. But I was stuck with the chicken dish.
How was this healthy (which means "no adding cheese") chicken dish going to go down? Then I remembered I had a great Chardonnay in the fridge. Now I'd like to drink Corton Charlemagne every day but who can afford that?! But what I had chilled I've had before and I knew it was killer! Waiting, ready to rescue yet another chicken dinner was a rockin' Chilean Chardonnay. Now I know Chile is not the first place you think of for Chard but this is the third or fourth white I've had from Chile that sings! For this wine I find this great, almost sweet banana note on the nose that melds into toasty marshmallow with a nice minerality in the mouth. It also has a nice, long finish that can add depth and pleasure to even the most boring chicken dish!
What's the wine? 2006 Garces Silva Amayna Chardonnay - 93 RP, - $19.99 per bottle!
PS - I'm also stashing a few bottles of one my favorite Corton Charlemagnes for dire culinary emergencies (like my brother-in-law's cookouts) and that savior is the 2004 Louis Latour Corton Charlemagne - 92 BH - $79.99/ bottle!