Les Trois Couronnes

Good, inexpensive wine ($10) last night.  The wine was a 2007 Les Trois Couronnes, a Cotes du Rhone.  The wine was a blend of 80% Grenache and 20% Syrah.  The nose was the strawberries from the Grenache and some red plums coming from the Syrah.  Medium weight in the mouth, the flavor was spot on with the fruit.  Add in some grape tannin and decent acid and for the price this was a more than acceptable wine.  Nothing profound here, just good wine.

Dinner was pastitsio, a Greek cousin of lasagna.  Ground beef and lamb was sauteed with onions, cinnamon, garlic, oregano, marjoram and a few other spices.  I added a can of tomatoes and some tomato paste and cooked the entire thing down.  It was mixed with cooked pasta, I used small tubeti.  The contents went into a casserole dish and was topped with a bechamel sauce loaded with cheese and Greek yogurt.  The casserole then spent almost an hour in the oven, until it was browned and bubbling. 

Good with the wine, and particularly the wine was good with the cinnamon that was in the meat mixture.  Oh, the name means The Three Crowns.