These are notes from a dinner with friends intended to feature wines of the 1980s and to play about with food and wine combinations.
I started them out with a bubbly for sipping while settling in and chatting, the only out of theme wine of the evening.
Blue Mountain Brut – this BC winery makes some of the best domestic bubbly, and this basic Brut ($24C) is reliable and pleasant. I believe they use chard and probably some pinot blanc or pinot gris, and it winds up having pretty good mousse quite good fruit and very good balance, finishing nice and dry. Hard to find sometimes – usually sold only in private wine stores and at the winery. This was meant only as a palate calibrator and was served without food.
1989 J. Lasalle Champagne Blanc de Blancs Brut – I wanted a mature bubbly to contrast with the first wine and I’d recently had this in the 1990 vintage. Showing some colour, a toasty mature nose, and (a great descriptor applied by another taster) a baked apple on palate. I like to play about with food combinations and as it was my dinner, I took the opportunity to do so. I served this wine with a small mound of rinsed (don’t want too much salt) capers, a Parmesan tuille, and a small branch of fresh thyme dipped in a nice spicy EVOO, refrigerated and then anointed with sea salt which is intended to just be sucked, although several seemed to have some leaves missing from the thyme by the time they were finished. These flavours matched well with the mature Champagne.
1989 Ch. d’Arche – here was the first principal assumed by many – you can’t go from sweet to dry again (the fact that they’ve done this in France for a century or two is usually ignored). This mature Sauternes had quite a deep colour, and the nose was caramel, honey and some botrytis. It worked well with Cou d’oie stuffed with lightly truffled foie d’oie (I cheated and used a tinned pâté that I had brought back from the Dordogne last year. I like the flavours of the goose liver, but we usually only see duck preparations in North America.
Now the task was to get their palates back in shape for dry red wines. I tried a small salad of English cucumber ribbons (mandolin or hand peeler required) and fresh cilantro dressed with a rice wine vinegar and Nuoc Mam (a Thai fish sauce) with ginger juice (grate fresh ginger and then press out the juice), with black sesame seeds on top. It seemed to do the trick.
1989 Chante Perdrix Chateauneuf de Pape – I served this in a Burgundy balloon, both because I think that shape complements a mature wine of this sort, as well as in an attempt at misdirection for my blind tasters. I was unable to trick Rhone-Boy (a pseudonym) who nailed it as a Rhone. It showed medium colour (bit darker than a Burg of similar age, but definitely the colour of a well aged Rhone) had only a slight hint of funkiness with the proverbial Asian spices, was long and smooth with good acidity and only soft tannins. Ready to roll and a good one. I looked this up in Parker (I most value his reviews of Rhones and Bordeaux) and back in the days before high scores became almost routine, he awarded this a 94 – I think he nailed this one, and it has exceeded his estimated drinking window. This is why I cellar some CNduP for the long haul.
Food match was quails stuffed with goat cheese and rosemary and then wrapped with smoked bacon, and roasted (at 500 F. so use the timer!). Accompaniment was a leek with a cream sauce with bacon and toasted hazelnuts.
Next up was the main course and I wanted to try and change up a little by varying the vintage and adding what I hoped would be a ringer.
1988 Ch. Pichon Baron – I went through all sorts of mental gymnastics trying to come up with a Bordeaux to match with the next wine. I thought of a 1990 or 1989, or even a lesser wine from 1986 (I had a Meyney sitting out for a week or so). Then one of the guests brought a 1966 Pichon Baron to one of my lunches and the idea of doing that wine in the same vintage as the other came to mind. For me the nose on this was instant classic claret, with some lead pencil, cassis and very good fruit for this vintage, with elegance, balance and length. Nothing lacking here. Oddly enough, some sceptics (they were pretty sure they were being tricked but didn’t know how, though this wine was perhaps American while the other was Bordeaux!
1988 Sassicaia – this was the cabernet I wanted to fool them with, and on at east a coupe it worked. The nose was not as immediately forthcoming, but opened with time in the glass. The cedar, spice and currant/cassis elements were compatible with Bordeaux expectations, and the wine showed excellent balance and a bit more or at least sweeter fruit than the Pichon did. It should also have a long life ahead as it just seems to be hitting stride now.
Food was a loin of lamb rolled in cumin, cinnamon, cloves, cardamom and aniseed, the seared briefly before being wrapped in phyllo pastry and cooked to be quite rare. I find the interplay of these flavours with red wines to be fascinating. The accompaniment here was a potato recipe I cribbed from Laura Calder (Food Network Canada) Thinly sliced potatoes marinated in cream, then layered in a container with each layer generously spiced with salt and pepper, and fresh rosemary and thyme. Cook for about 90 minutes and you get a very tasty tater stack you can slice into portions. One guest knew the recipe and opined that he just poured the cream on top and it was all absorbed but being the heart smart kind of guy I am, and having already perpetrated foie gras and a cream sauce on them, I restrained myself in this instance.
‘Dessert’ was cheese, mostly blue with Shropshire, Bleu d’Auvergne and Bleu de Bresse, but SWMBO had the brainstorm that as we had a nice Coulomierres intended to offer a little variety from the otherwise all-blue line up, and as we also had some left over phyllo pastry……so that’s what we served – baked Coulomierres in phyllo.
I needed a Port (another challenge to the popular opinion that you can’t do Port and Sauternes in the same dinner – I think you can, if you separate them well enough) to go with this and wanted to stick to my 1988/89 time frame theme. I found that the only Port I had from that vintage was a single quinta from Dow:
1989 Quinta do Bomfim Port – needed time to open up in the glass (I’d started us out with smaller Waterford traditional Port glasses, but Rhone-Boy took the first step of pouring it into a Reidel Bordeaux and that helped quite a bit). I hate drinking Port that hasn’t had enough time open – you always figure that if only you’d just opened it earlier it would have been that much better. I didn’t know this one that well so erred on the cautious side at about 6 hours in an open decanter, but judging by what it did in the glass it could even have taken more time. Very pleasant with excellent fruit, not too sweet and good ength. I didn’t get the same fruitcake impression as I had on the last bottle I opened about 8 years ago, and this nose seemed a bit riper. Decent juice all in all. Could have gone with 87 Malvedos but it was out of theme, or 86 do Tua (a Cockburns quinta) but I seem to have misplaced the case…..
