Good meal. Bad match

I ruined a perfectly good dinner last night with an uninspired, lazy and thoughtless wine match. It's time to own up to it and take my lumps.

First, the dinner.
At first, I was going to have sausage, peppers and onions on crusty rolls. But it didn't come together for me in my head, so instead, I turned it into a pasta sauce.
Garlic, farmer's market red and green Hungarian peppers, and onion, all chopped up and set to soften in xvoo. That was in one pan. In another, I threw in a bunch of fresh romas from our garden, dry and let them blister all around. Then, (don't try this at home) I pulled the the skins right off them while they were still on the fire and cooking, a neat trick I learned from watching some chef without working nerve endings in his finger tips. To this, I added fresh sliced crimini mushrooms, salting and peppering as I went. While that continued to cook, I opened up three hot sausage links and dropped the meat in with the tomatos and mushrooms. While that all cooked, I deglazed the pepper and onion mixture with some dry vermouth. Once the sausage lost its raw color, I combined the two pans onto one, and mixed and continued to simmer so that the flavors would meld.
This was served atop rigatoni, and adorned with freshly grated Reggiano parm.

I then came face to face with the weakness of my cellar design, in which I utilized only bin storage. I thought this dish would have gone well with a gutsy red, and I had some Domaine de Fontsainte Corbieres that would have been just the ticket.
But my bottles were on the bottom of the stack, and I didn't feel like taking all the bottles out of the bin to access the one I wanted. And since stuff was on the stove top, I had to double back to the kitchen quickly. So I grabbed something off the top of the bin, a Hitching Post 05 Merlot. Yes, Merlot. HP actually produced a very nice Merlot from Los Alamos fruit in 05, and it would have made a nice match with some rare roast beef or a thick, juicy steak.
It couldn't stand up to my sauce, however, and it wasn't a good match at all.

Live and learn. Select and retrieve the wine before the cooking starts.

HP actually produced a very nice Merlot from Los Alamos fruit in 05

You'd think the radioactivity would have added enough oomph to carry it off.

Not that Los Alamos, silly.
You've been hanging out with TomHill too much.

Oh, dear. Merlot without an AOC. Why would you do that to yourself?

John,

Acck. Agree that most Merlot was destined for a bad match here. Do you try to keep a good mix of of bottles at the ready, standing upright in your cellar ? I try to, but it's impossible to be ready with everything.

John...

You need a bartender. Cindy could have done all that bottle moving.

Seriously, I cook. Tony bartends. It works.

I ruined a perfectly good dinner last night with an uninspired, lazy and thoughtless wine match. It's time to own up to it and take my lumps.

Live and learn. Select and retrieve the wine before the cooking starts.

Yes, but given you changed your mind about what you were having for dinner, AND it sounds like you were inventing your recipe on the fly (it sounds delicious, btw), how would you have known what to choose?

Which leads to another question - do people usually choose their wine, and then match their food, or the other way around? We definitely choose food, and then hunt for a wine, but then again, we're no longer wine obsessed. It used to be different.

Celia,

In our house, the order of planning the wine and planning the food goes either way, first or second; and it frequently gets undone again when you planned a wine, the food being made isn't what you'd like to pair the wine with, so it's back to the cold room again.

But I am particularly careful with matching wine with tomato, asparagus or lemon; and in no case would I send a poor little Merlot to the plate to pinch hit against a tomato.

Go Dodgers. Whew, I had to work hard to get that one in.

Go Dodgers. Whew, I had to work hard to get that one in.

But you did it so well. A truly seamless segue.

I then came face to face with the weakness of my cellar design, in which I utilized only bin storage. I thought this dish would have gone well with a gutsy red, and I had some Domaine de Fontsainte Corbieres that would have been just the ticket.
But my bottles were on the bottom of the stack, and I didn't feel like taking all the bottles out of the bin to access the one I wanted. And since stuff was on the stove top, I had to double back to the kitchen quickly.

John,

Your dinner sounds fantastic! Question about the wine storage though...I like the way bin storage looks, but I keep my bottles in racks with individual slots for each bottle so I do not have to remove 11 bottles to pull out the one bottle I want that may be at the bottom. Is there an advantage to bin storage?

Is there an advantage to bin storage?

Well, after last night, my answer would be a big, fat, no.
When I had the cellar put together, it was the less expensive way to go.
You get what you pay for.
On the bright side, we only have one of the four walls racked, so as we save a few pennies, we'll most certainly have more traditional racking installed.