BBQ Potato Chips and Chateau D'Oupia: A Pleasant Party Pairing

Today's writing will divulge one of my most riveting and haute wine-food pairings experiences, ever. Consider yourselves very lucky, for this is a high level secret that will likely never be explored in the wine press. It's only discussed among professionals. That’s what I overhead, anyway.
First, a little background: my husband and I moved to a new apartment recently. As I'm sure many of you have discovered, moving, unpacking, and the process of trying to find where the only sharp knife was packed does not inspire culinary production. In fact, it quickly instigates mass consumption of fast and/or convenience food. I don’t want to cook when I’ve been packing boxes all day, and my husband doesn’t want to cook after watching my unpack boxes all day. Its so tiring. We can’t find the fridge.
Now, fast or convenience food (otherwise known as “junk”) is the type of food that I try not to introduce too often into my diet. Sadly, the reasons for this choice have less to do with health and more to do with my addictive eating habits. I'll just come out and say it: I am a chip junkie. And a cheeto junkie. And a cheese puff addict. In short, if a huge bag of leftover chips are sitting in the kitchen cabinet from our first meal in the house, they're going down. I just don't stop. I try to keep them out of the house.
Yet sometimes their addictive delicious, salty crunch gets through the door, and my will power goes out. The result of such a time is this fantastic pairing:
KFC BBQ chips and Chateau d'Oupia wine
KFC BBQ chips, are well, very salty and sweet and habit forming, and Chateau d'Oupia is one of my favorite under $15 bottle of wines composed of Syrah, Carignon and Grenache (typical Rhone Valley inspired blend). Note to readers: the Minervois, Langedoc region produces some of the best reds sold for the least money in your local wine shop. They’re often, as is the Oupia, smoky, brooding, peppery, and stock full of dark lush berry fruit.
Now, I had the chips with a deli sandwich. But the magic was really the Oupia and the chips together. I like to think its because, like the chips, the Oupia is smokey, a touch sweet, and spicy. True, the Oupia’s flavors come from oak and the grape, and not chemical enhancers like the BBQ chips, but that’s not stopping the match made in America. Superb. Dangerous. The perfect excuse to crash a frat party with fine wine.

Summery Spanish Wines & Light BBQ

To celebrate my husband's birthday, we invited my cousin and her man over to our place for exuberant birthday bash for four. And by exuberant I mean that there was tons of food and wine and that I added chocolate chips to a cupcake recipe that didn't call for it. This post is the wine and food story of that night.

The food (albeit the Oreo cupcakes) was mainly Thai and Vietnamese inspired, but cooked by a very Scandinavian-American girl. The wines were all Spanish. The dinner menu starred my version of the carrot, cucumber, bell-pepper and light fish-sauce salad often served atop cold Vietnamese rice noodle dishes. Also sharing the stage were lime, honey and chili marinated skewered shrimp, and grilled flank steak served over wide rice noodles in a spicey, kaffir lime, lemongrass Thai inspired coconut sauce.



I choose Spanish wines for this Birthday Bash for three reasons. One, they were reasonably priced and my excellent foresight told me that we'd consume from two to three bottles between us friends. Two, because I'm enamoured with Spanish wines (especially the whites, sparklings and rosés) and was selfishly catering to my happiness even on my husband's birthday night. Three, I chose Spanish wines for the menu because they can be awesome matches for Vietnamese and Thai spices and flavors and seafood.

I popped our first wine while waiting for our guests. Our invitees claimed not to be huge fans of white wine, so I took it upon myself to thwart thier past experiences by unleashing an Albarino. Albarinos are meant to charm. They're from the Galacian coast of Spain and classically paired with seafood at Spanish tapas bars. With their apple, peachy, lime and sometimes floral scents, they're instant pleasers. Furthermore, they've got enough going on in the glass that they can handle a little spice. Each dish I prepared for the dinner had lime juice, zest, or leaf mixed in, which I thought would play up the lime streak and cozy up to crisp and stoney fruits in the wine. Worked well. We sipped this while I put the finishing touches on the salad and headed to the BBQ to cook the shrimp and flank steak. Then we opened the Super Wine of the night.

My only firm and fast wine rule for a celebration such as a birthday, anniversary, or Christmas, is that something sparkling must be included amoungst the wine entourage. Birthdays just don't happen without bubbles. The bubbles don't have to be big, but they have to be present. Such reasoning led to the second wine that we drank that night- a Txakolina Rose from Spain. This was my favorite. It was luscious, oh so pink, peachy and rasberry-ie and tart and slightly. Txakolina (shock-oh-lee-nah) is the name of a Basque, Spanish wine made traditionally with the Hondarribi Zuri and Hondarribi Beltza grapes. They're meant to drinken within a year or two after bottling, and will be, because you just can't help yourself. Most Txakolinas aren't Roses, but are just as enchanting as the pink bottle that we poured that night. Their pear, tart apple and lime flavors compete for attention with the tiny, spritzy bubbles that fill the glass. And bubbles go with almost anything. They snuggled up to the coconut milk and spicy shrimp, and even handeled the marbling in the rich flank steak. I looovvee this wine only slightly less than my man.

Towards the end of the night we slipped a light Spanish Grenache on the table. Just in case someone wanted a little red with the flank steak. Spanish Grenaches (Garnachas) can be pretty dark and heady, but our's that night was a lighter style, with blackberry, stoney scents. And I didn't just serve it because it was also left over from our wedding wine, I served it because Garnachas are great red wines for spicey foods. They're spicey themselves, and the pepper streak in the grape can handle a chile or two.

Finally, we ended our night with a Birthday dessert request of cupcakes. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate chips topped with cream cheese frosting and crushed Oreos. Muddlers are great Oreo crushers. It was a fantastic end for the night. My cousin and I ate two, and the guys ate three each. And I was just going to prepare a half dozen.

Good Picnic Wines 1

Good Picnic Wines: As Easy to Find as Flowers are to Pick from Your Neighbors Yard When She's Sleeping (and not because you gave her a light sedative)


The most important thing to remember when picking yourslef out a picnic wine is that anything will work. Really, anything. It's a picnic. Stress should only be involved if hornets attack the lunchmeat. The above pictures are a case in point. I say drink whatever the invitees bring, preferably out of plastic cups.

However, if you are the one buying the wine (for example, if your invitees are in charge of the ice-cream cake), my motto for choosing a picnic wine is that the simplier, lighter, the perkier the wine, the better. The point of the event is the fresh air, the fresh, enjoyable food, the company, and,... sitting on or very very near grass. The wine should be pleasent, fun wine. Something that doesn't take you away from the company or the grass because you can't figure out what that frieken smell is the plastic cup. In other words, the wine shouldn't scream out for a decanter.

My wedding, pictured in the recent post, was an outdoors reception. The menu was all picnic- yummy sandwhiches from our local top-notch deli, Greek potato salad, fresh salad greens with a balsamic vinegarette, cherries and strawberries and cheese plates. All of this food lovliness can be viewed on the lastest post, in picture two. The wine that we served was just as light and fresh as the food. We served Verasol for the red (pictured in the lastest post, first picture)- an inexpensive, light Spanish Grenache that gave off dark fruit and stoney aromas. The white was Domaine de Pellehaut (not pictured)- a French wine from the Gascony region made of Ugni Blanc and Colombard . Smelled like pear and flowers. Our sparkling was a Cremant d'Alasce- the pictured sparkling on this post. But I'm all for anything. I might consider an un-oaky chardonnay, like the LaLande, the last picture in the previous post. Or a pinot noir. And definitely, I'd serve beer, like we did at our wedding.

By the way, my definition of a picnic is very basic. Nice sandwhiches, a potato salad, fruit. Maybe even cold barbequed chicken and a little cheese. Don't get caught up on the idea that the cheese and the wine must match. They musn't. Not for a picnic, because, as I mentioned before, the point of a picnic is not the matching perfection of the wine and the food. It's the company, the fresh air. If the wine and cheese don't match pefectly, finish eating the cheese, have a bite of potato salad, and then the take a sip of the wine.

Summer doesn't last forever, so relax and indulge in the incrediable seasonal oppurtunity to drink wine from plastic cups.

Note: All photos were taken by photographer Thomas Hopkins