Rack of Lamb, Cairanne

To celebrate Memorial Day, the completion of hauling out our plants for the summer (no small feat), and the publication of one of my papers in Science, we decided to celebrate with a rather nice meal on Monday night. I roasted up a (half) rack of lamb, paired with orzo and sauted spinach. Now, I love lamb almost any way you can get it. But a rack of rib chops is something for a real special occasion. First, I trimmed it down--cutting off some of the extra fat, and "frenching" the chops--that is, cutting off the fat between the boney part of the chop. I rubbed the cut down with a mix of rosemary, garlic, salt, pepper and olive oil, and roasted it for a short time in a very hot oven, just to a nice medium rare. The flavor was great, and the fat crisped nicely. The meat came from Hanewaald lamb, our farmers market lamb specialist--and it was just spectacular. It was from a young (or small) critter, so was both tender and mild flavored. My cooking did justice to the cut, if I may ignore false modesty. And the goat yogurt sauce with garlic (from the farmers market again) was a great, earthy, acidic pairing. The orzo was nice, and the spinach, sauteed in olive oil with a bit of garlic for about 30 seconds was nice and still a bit "al dente".

But the meal was really brought to fruition by the wine--a Domaine de Boisson Cairanne cotes-du-rhone Villages. I may have mentioned this wine--tasted as part of our Wednesday group--a few weeks back. It's a real southern Rhone beauty. We loved it so much (OK-I loved it) at the tasting that we split a case with a friend-getting it at a per bottle under $15. Now, I am a big fan of the "biggies" of the southern Rhone--notably, Chateauneuf du Papes. These are immense, earthy wines with a great blend of elegance and rusticity. To be truly appreciated, they need years, even decades, of bottle aging. Many also require a small fortune to purchase--top estates sell bottles well into 3 figures. This Cairanne has a lot of those same notes--not surprising, since the region is only a few miles from CdP. It's got a ton of minerality--hot rocks, slate--and a good fruit up front. But it also has the tarry, herbal, tobacco, garrigue-y notes that give southern Rhones so much complexity. By itself, this is a wonderful wine, though, as Julie reminds me, it is definitely better with food--as is virtually any well-made wine.

But, for me, the real beauty was the combination of food, wine, and of course, the reason for celebration. The fruit brought out the sweetness of the lamb, the tannins cut the fat, and the herb rub combined exquisitely with the herbal, garrigue notes in the wine. In short, this was a match made in heaven, or at least in the southern Rhone. The entirety of the meal was so much more than the sum of its parts, thanks to that wonderful synergy. It is not that hard to come up with decent, even good, wine and food pairings. Every so often, you bring together that magical combination of food and wine that is just transcendental. And, when you do, you'll never forget the experience.