About a year ago, I unwittingly unleashed a minor sh*tstorm when I taste-tested some very good chocolates and paired them with some very good wine and found the match up to be not-so-very-good.

The main issue then was that the very good chocolates in question were designed specifically to pair with wines. And yet, time and time again I find myself coming back to a conclusion that is almost as certain in the wine and food pairing world as death and taxes are to the “real” world:

Most wine and chocolate pairings simply DO NOT work.

The vast majority of the time, the chocolate is too robust, and it clobbers the paired wine. This is because most still, dry wines – even hefty, hearty reds – just lack the jabs to counter chocolate’s overall lack of subtlety and bitter power-punch. The match-up might work for some people, but probably doesn’t work for most people.

There are, of course exceptions – more on those in a minute – but they are just that: exceptions. You’re usually far, far better served enjoying the wine and then later enjoying the chocolate, keeping them as far away from one another in the process, lest they start the palate equivalent of a Ballroom Blitz.

So you can imagine the pants-crapping emotions I experienced when I was recently hired to choose the wines for a wine and chocolate pairing corporate event held in Philly’s iconic Curtis Center. Yiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiikeeeessssssssssssssssssssss!…

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When Playboy.com asked me to put together a primer on Champagne (for the NYE celebration holiday season), I was sporting a seriously large sh*t-eating grin on my face.

I mean, c’mon… the homework involved in that requires me to raid the sample pool for all of the Champers I could get my grubby little paws on; and while there are many strong contenders outside of the region, when it comes to sparkling wine, a strong argument can be made that Champagne still reigns supreme. Just try finding wine geeks who don’t like it… (now there’s a needle-in-the-haystack treasure hunt for you).

Put another way: there are far worse assignments, okay?

Interestingly, while the annual New Year’s Eve run-up on sparkling wine articles was in full-force (I think there were more of those in the last week of December than Lindsay Lohan rehab stints), the most interesting piece of bubbly news at the close of 2012 came from NPR, of all places…

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This past September while touring the less-appreciated side of Bordeaux as a guest of Planete Bordeaux, we wrapped up our jaunt with a boat ride, before which we tossed back some cured meats and a lot of tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux whites and rosés, and during which we tossed back some oysters and a lot of tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux whites and rosés, and after which we ate dinner at a modest-but-quite-good restaurant along the water (and tossed back a lot tasty and inexpensive Bordeaux reds, whites and rosés).

But before you fly into a curious jealous rage and/or hate on me for even accepting a trip like that, it should be noted that in typical organized-by-the-French fashion, this little aquatic jaunt sounds more idyllic than it is when manifested in the context of, well, reality. We had to roll up pant legs carry shoes and socks and wade through the crisp, September-chilled waters to climb into the boat, a well-maintained but on-the-small side craft that would have suited four people a lot better than it did ten. I like to drink, and I like to east, but I don’t like to sit on wood planks for long periods of time (thought I gave that one up when I decided to stop going to Catholic Sunday mass regularly).

Once the wine and oysters are flowing, however, it’s easy enough to forget the relatively mild inconveniences and the Autumn bite, so I’m not complaining here. I’ll let the photos do the talking.

However, taken as a whole, a leisurely open-aired boat ride is not the environment that’s conducive to any kind of formal critical assessment, which doesn’t matter anyway when Academy Award-winner Marion Cotillard is dining (with entourage) a few tables away from you, and someone (in this case, Marc Milhade, of Chateau Recougne) brought along a 1959 red that their grandfather made. At which point things become decidedly more… awesome…

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When most people hear the name of a French Chateau, they conjure up in their mind’s eye a scenario that probably looks a lot like what

Féret-Lambert is like in real life: green hills punctuated by vineyards bulging with ripe, juicy Merlot grapes; a large, picturesque house dating from the 1700s, located a stone’s throw from Saint-Emilion in the French countryside.

But when I hear the words Féret-Lambert, I have near-instant recall of something else entirely; I think about… tomato pie.

[ I also think about the dog that tried to eat my water bottle. More on that little bugger later. ]

I think about the fourth generation family that now runs the show there, yes; and I think about some overachieving Merlot-based wine, too, of course. But the heart of the mater to me was the tomato pie we had at lunch when I visited Féret-Lambert in September, as a media guest of Planete Bordeaux.

For the uninitiated in Mid-Atlantic “Little Italy” cuisine, tomato pie is, essentially, margherita pizza without the cheese. But as with any cuisine, there are endless variations, and as a kid who loved tomatoes grown into an adult who loves tomatoes, I have tried just about all of them. Thin, flaky crusts with fresh baked tomato and a hint of sauce on top; thick, floppy, focaccia-style bread with a gargantuan amount of sloppy, garlic-filled red sauce oozing of the top; hearty dough that’s soft in the center, crispy on the bottom, and with a light coating of embedded, seasoned tomatoes and a thin layer of sauce that curls at the thick crust and bakes ever-so-slightly into the top layer of the bread (that last style is the equivalent of tomato pie mouthgasm for me). Inexpensive to make, but tough to do really well, and a little (literal) slice of luxury for a boy living in the “upper end of the lower middle class.”

So when it comes to tomato pie – from the utterly banal to the downright succulent – I’ve just about had it all.

And I can therefore tell you with at least a semi-educated opinion that Féret-Lambert makes a mean tomato pie; more pie-like than pizza-like, flaky crust and ultra-fresh tomatoes baked up together with enough near-perfection to give a Little Italy expat a deep sense of homecoming. And with the Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon grapes that they’re pulling off of the thirteen-or-so hectares of vines that they cultivate there, Féret-Lambert is also making a mean, budget-minded Bordeaux red to go with it…

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