Pasta, Meet Wine

I can’t remember how I first came upon the recipe for linguine avgolemono. But I have a theory.

My parents went to South America a few years ago and returned with a drink called the “pisco sour.” They brought back a few pouches of mix powder—just add pisco!—but the full recipe from scratch involves pisco (a South American liqueur distilled from grapes), lemon juice, simple syrup, bitters, and egg whites.

It drinks like a deadly cross between a margarita and the greatest Kool-Aid ever, and it probably warrants its own blog entry. But when I made it, I felt weird using just the whites of the eggs and tossing out the yolks. I felt the need to salvage the yolks somehow.

So I typed “egg yolks” into Epicurious and found linguine avgolemono, a Greek pasta dish involving not just egg yolks, but also artichoke hearts, green beans, cream, and parsley. It’s got a great creamy, earthy, slightly acidic thing going on, and it’s one of a handful of go-to dishes I can be relied upon to make.

Anyway, one day I was tasting at Fine Wine Brokers, and one of the whites being sampled was Béchar, 2007. I have a really hard time describing this wine, other than “unusual.” I’ve described it before as cake-like, and there’s a hefty mouthfeel and a mild sweetness that make me think so. But there’s also smoky edge to it, and kind of an earthy perfume that luxuriates in the sinuses.

I immediately knew it would go with linguine avgolemono. An unexpected cool sharpness that would complement the flavors while slicing through the cream.

I have bought several bottles, and I have only drunk it with linguine avgolemono. I brought Jen into the fold, and recently the two of us took to contemplating the flavors of the wine.

I kept saying pound cake, she kept saying breakfast.

“Do you get bacon?” she asked. We were on my back deck finishing off the bottle, our stomachs full of pasta and artichokes. I did not get bacon. I maintained there was something more bready and sweet.

“Yes, but there’s the smoke,” she said, and she squinted into the distance and flexed her jaw. She does this to simulate eating, which triggers her brain to analyze taste. (At least, that’s our theory of why she does this.) “And something kind of meaty.”

We sipped and analyzed in silence. Soon I tasted it too—bacon!

We reached the conclusion that the wine tasted like French toast that had been made in the same skillet as the rashers of bacon you made earlier. Why on earth that would go so well with a Greek pasta dish, I can’t begin to imagine, but it does. And thanks to the brief restock of Béchar a few weeks ago, and my subsequent consumption of the one I’d been saving, I am back to owning the last bottle in all of Chicago.