It has just been one storm after another here in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve never experienced anything like it. Cold. Wind. Torrential rain. My upcoming trip to sunny Costa Rica can’t come soon enough. As the wind rattles the windows and the rain pours down, my thoughts keep drifting to my last sunny vacation: Greece. In that vein, I decided to choose a Greek wine for this week’s winesday. I chose 2005 Kouros White. This wine comes from the Patras region of the Pelopponnese peninsula and is made from the indigenous rhoditis grape. There are actually over 300 native varietals in Greece. Bottom line: never buy a merlot or chardonnay from Greece. This wine was pretty good. It had flavors of pear and was very crisp. A good food wine, for sure.

For my dinner, I made Lingcod in Grape Leaves with Pine Nut-Fig Butter from Tom Douglas’ Seattle Kitchen cookbook. The fish market hadn’t had lingcod in for about month so they gave me some actual cod instead (even though I think lingcod is more similar to halibut but, since they didn’t have halibut either, it doesn’t really matter much.) Also, there weren’t any good dried figs at my store so I used dates instead. For this recipe, you mix pine nuts, figs (or dates), thyme, and lemon zest with butter and then spread this over the pieces of fish. Then, the fish are wrapped in grape leaves and cooked in the oven in a white wine and shallot broth. I served it over couscous with lemon, mint and parsley. It was a delicious meal and went very well with the wine. It was almost good enough to transport me, briefly, past the snow on the ground to a warmer place.