A wine lover’s question: What’s more satisfying than discovering a great, yet unjustly obscure wine? Answer: Marrying that wine to a dish meant to be its synergistic soul mate. Just such a perfect pairing raised my pleasure quotient one evening last week at Casa Mono, the little dynamo of a Spanish restaurant on Irving Place. I can’t claim discovery, though, since the pairing took home a first prize at a world competition earlier this year.

The extraordinary wine, selected by Casa Mono’s wine director, Nancy Selzer, was, of all things, a sherry: Gonzalez Byass Apostoles Palo Cortado “Muy Viejo” (meaning very old). Palo cortado designates an unusual sherry style whose full, silky, flavors hover between sweet and dry, mellow and tangy. Chef Andy Nusser matched the Apostoles with higados con cinco cebollas — seared foie gras with five types of onions in a pool of sherry, onion seeds, and membrillo (quince) sauce. The onions ranged from what Mr. Nusser calls “pickled pearls” to wilted leeks to a red onion opened up like a tulip with the foie gras nestled within. A crisp slice of grilled tomato bread separated the “softness of the onions from that of the foie gras.” Each partner in this match amplified and deepened the sweet and tart flavors of the others. Already a major presence on its own, the Apostoles positively glowed with the food.

Late last year, Mr. Nusser and Ms. Selzer patiently calibrated the elements of this wine-and-dish match in preparation for the second annual Copa Jerez culinary competition held last January in Jerez, Spain, sherry’s hometown. “I knew I wanted a palo cortado for this dish,” Ms. Selzer said. “It’s such a rare and beautiful wine. We tried several versions. This particular one is made with the traditional palomino grape, which gives dryness, but it also has a touch of the sweeter Pedro Ximénez. The dish needed that touch of sweetness to stand up the natural sweetness of the onions.”

In the Copa Jerez competition, Mr. Nusser and Ms. Selzer competed against teams from eight countries: Each team prepared a three-course meal with matching sherries in dry, sweet, and medium (including palo cortado) styles before a panel of judges. All pairings were required to be available on the regular menus of the competing restaurants. The Casa Mono team won first prize in the medium category. “We went being just who we are — humble, plain, and simple food from an open kitchen,” Mr. Nusser said. “We competed with some big kids who put a lot more ingredients on the plate, and here we were basically doing liver and onions. When we won, Nancy and I had goose bumps from head to toe.” (52 Irving Place at 17th Street, 212-253-2773).

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IS IT ART — OR A WINE RACK? The trompe l’oeil Peppermint Patties, M&Ms, and Milano and Oreo cookies that Robin Antar sculpts out of stone and painstakingly colors in her Brooklyn studio are appealing to junk food addicts and art lovers alike. They are so realistic that one visitor to her home mistook a stone Oreo cookie for the real thing and broke his tooth. Now Ms. Antar has taken a more utilitarian aim at wine buffs with her Wine Knot, an abstract sculpture that doubles as a two-bottle wine rack. “I wanted to make a functional piece of art,” Ms. Antar said. “If you run out of wine, you’ve got sculpture.”

While most of her work is oneoff, the Wine Knot is mould-cast to order from a composite of stone dust and resin “to keep the price reasonable,” Ms. Antar said. The Wine Knot weighs 25 pounds and costs $950 in white and $1,050 tinted in cobalt blue. Ms. Antar also accepts commissions to make exact stone replicas of wine bottles, as she recently did for an admirer of Chateau Haut-Brion.

(Robin Antar Studios, 718-375-5156, www.rantar.com).