Everybody knows that chicken breast is good for you, being high in protein and quite low in fat. The problem is that it can also be pretty damned boring because it is, well, quite low in fat.
So how do you turn it into a dish that will be as acceptable to 
your palate as to your conscience? And then how to you take it from acceptable to delicious by pairing it with a wine that can really make it sing?
This is just the sort of challenge that Marguerite Thomas and Paul Lukacs tackle for us on WRO twice each month in their “Wine With” feature. If you aren’t in the habit of scrolling down to “Wine With,” you are missing out on one of the most distinctive and interesting English-language contributions to wine writing–for those individuals who love wine but also happen to eat.
Although Marguerite and Paul occasionally work with a dish for a special occasion, they usually work with affordable, manageable dishes that don’t require a trust fund or a degree from a culinary academy to prepare. Then they yank the corks from a whole slew of possible partner wines to find out which hypothetical winners turn out to be actual winners.
The wines, like the foods, are generally moderate in price. And so it should be: Any idiot can come up with a good wine-and-food match if he’s got $150 for wine and a truffle-studded crown roast of veal. The real challenge, in the real world, comes on an ordinary night, when you’ve got twelve bucks for wine and are confronting a boneless breast of chicken that threatens to send your taste buds into a coma.
So, have a look at this issue’s edition of Wine With to learn what to do with that chicken breast, and to see which $12 wine came out on top in the tasting trials!
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