At Oddbins wine retail, there is an OK selection of Bonarda wines for under £10. It’s not that the Oddbins guys picked poorly, but more that the overall selection of Bonarda worldwide is, well, kind of lackluster. The 2006 Familia Zuccardi Reserva is an exception. It’s light in body. Lighter than you’d think given the dark color this grape exudes. There is some violet and red current and aromatic India spice, but it’s still too young to drink, since the swallow is kind of harsh. But at £8, this is a ‘drink me now’ wine. Not one for the cellar. InterWined.com doesn’t like drink-me-nows that aren’t ready: 8.4 today, 8.7 in two years — if anyone cares to cellar a £8 Bonarda for that long.

In InterWined’s opinion, Bonarda is better as a blending grape, especially with its Argentine brother-in-law Malbec. Bonarda helps smooth out the wrinkles, especially with the 2006 Trivento Amado Sur also £8. Last year the wine had more Bonarda and less Syrah, but the 2006 is broken down like so — 75% Malbec, 15% Syrah, 10% Bonarda. Trivento is pretty good at nailing its market, so expect a smooth number with vanilla and oak. The wine is plumy, of course, thanks to the Malbec; but the Bonarda also adds some plumpiness and the Syrah gracefully lends some plushiness (both ‘p’ adjectives my computer claims aren’t actually real words). A dry nice finish, but some more tannin would be nice. 8.6 points.

So the Bonarda seems to still suffer in the single-bottling category, years down the line. Hopefully in another three, the real Bonarda will finally stand up.

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After a two-week hiatus, ‘Blow the Bank’ is back.

And, just as it has for the last five months, each Friday InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results, along with the recipe.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of its own recipe for Lamb Shank with Breakfast Mushrooms and Mashed Potatoes.

Shanks are tough, lean, temperamental cuts of meat from the tibia that require a great deal of attention, time, and cooking in order to become the big softies everyone loves. Cook them right and they reward you with a soft, tearaway flesh that falls of the bone onto your fork and almost dissolves in your mouth. Cook ‘em wrong and you forget what all the fuss is about.

To better illustrate the point, if you’ll forgive what is likely one of the most bizarre of food metaphors, shanks are pre-Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. (You remember him, don’t you? He was that great actor from such tour de forces as Jingle All The Way and that film about male pregnancy that must have seemed like a good idea to some since-replaced studio bigwig, Junior.)

Uncooked, the shank’s just like Arnie à la the first Terminator — all relentless and badass, but, if you can hold out long enough, it’ll come back out of the oven re-wired and on your side just like Arnie the Protector in T2. It’s all about patience. If you’re impatient, if you rush it by cooking it on a higher heat for less time for instance, it’s game over. The Connors are dead, and the future’s fit only for machines. Good Job, ‘girlie man’. Now, instead of forking through some tender Schwarzenegger, you’re left with piping hot rock-hard heap of Vin Diesel! And let’s face it; no one wants that to happen. Not you; not me.

Sure we could argue for days on end about merits of both men, whose less wooden or whose better at looking tough under the lights, their muscles glistening from a last-minute olive oil rubdown. Yet, whatever the outcome, it’s just cosmetics. We’re talking meat, not musclemen. And, the real fact of the fact of the matter is we’d all rather watch a limp Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop over a cloying Vin Diesel in The Pacifier. Don’t deny it (Especially you, Gaffney — I’ve seen your video collection: It’s all Raw Deal, Red Heat, Last Action Hero, and Batman & Robin with you. Not a single copy of A Man Apart or Find Me Guilty in the bunch.)

And so it is with lamb shanks, it’s about the meat not the muscle — better an overcooked softie than an undercooked tough guy, which is exactly what happened with this week’s dish.

InterWined had high hopes that it’s breakfast mushrooms with onion, pancetta, and red wine would serve as the perfect jus for a soft, fall of the bone, lamb shank. And it would have paired beautifully too, had Sean proved more patient. Instead, the shank hung to bone far more than it should have done, coming in somewhere between Vin Diesel in XXX and Arnie in True Lies. If only it could have been Twins — where’s Danny Devito when you need him…right?

At 14.5% alcohol, the 2005 Chilean Matetic ‘Corralillo’ Merlot Malbec packs a punch. This is a muscle wine for a muscle shank, or so that was the thought when it was selected to accompany the lamb shank. It’s deep red in colour wine bouquet that’s falls somewhere between a campfire and a petrol station forecourt. For obvious reasons, one suspects most reviews would highlight the campfire over the forecourt. After all, the only people likely to get excited by the words “petrol station forecourt” probably drink a very select number of beverages that begin with White Lightning and wholly approve of Mark Vincent’s decision to change his name to Diesel.

For Vin Diesel fans and gasoline fetishists: 10 points.

For the rest of us: given the £11.99 price tag at Oddbinns, a-nothing-to-write-home-about 7.7 — too much alcohol, too little finesse.

InterWined’s Own Recipe In Full

Lamb Shank with Breakfast Mushrooms & Mashed Potatoes

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

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