Food, Wine & Friends Page 185
DINNER FOR ANNE MARKOVICH-GIRARD,
Visiting Dignitary from Chicago
March 2010
We began with a bottle of Lenoble 1990 Champagne, a
recently-disgorged bottle...
Connie poured the bubbly...you can see it's fairly brassy in terms of color...
The sassy and brassy Anne Markovich-Girard...
We had a potato 'cake' with smoked salmon and caper berries...
The Lenoble 1990 tasted more like a sparkling fino Sherry than it did "fine
Champagne."
The wine had oxidized to the point where the bubbly tasted more
"nutty" than yeasty. Of course, in "Fino" Sherry,
there's "flor" yeast adding a toasty/smoky element to the wine.
But this Champagne tasted as though it had been vinified by Tio Pepe and not Dom
Perignon or the brothers Krug.
Back in the kitchen, a pan full of escargot were waiting to go
into the oven...
I didn't quite get the proportion of butter and garlic right...needed more of
each, but still these were nice little morsels and the Colin-Morey
Chassagne-Montrachet was excellent. This label seems to be quite reliable
in terms of overall quality and style. This wine was from la Maltroie and
had nice fruit, some minerality and a touch of wood.
Kareasa toasted to Scotland (from where she's just returned from a raucous
couple of weeks of listening to heavy metal music and drinking heavy metal
whiskies)...
Seafood in parchment paper was next on the menu, accompanied by a couple of aged
Sauvignon Blanc wines.
The Tement is from the 2005 vintage...lovely herbal, grassy notes and a whiff of
wood...
The Colterenzio was from 2002...still young! Very herbal and
grassy...delicious.
This included sea scallops, calamari, rock shrimp, diced fennel, onions and a
'puree' of piquillo peppers. I also added a dash of smoked paprika.
Kareasa is dreaming of Scotland, still...
...And of Scottish stills.
We then decanted a pair of Napa Valley Cabernets from the 1987 vintage...
A Beaujolais sorbet to cleanse the palate...
And then we poured the Cabernets...
Steamed beets...
Baby Artichokes with Ellen's home-grown snow peas, peppers and squash...
Toasted Israeli Couscous and Morels.
The main plate was roasted duck breasts...rubbed with herbs and seasoned with
some salt and pepper...
They're first seared in a pan and then transferred to the oven where the finish
atop a bed of oven-roasted vegetables (spring onions, cauliflower and
zucchini)...
The Heitz was remarkably fresh and youthful. The aromas were wonderful and
typical of the "minty" character one usually finds in Martha's
Vineyard Cabernets.
The wine was smooth on the palate and complex...very fine.
The Dunn Howell Mountain was "older" or quite mature...more brown in
color and with an older character on the nose. It was fuller in body and
quite good...Classic Napa Cabernet.
"Oh my!"
"What a Burgundy!"
2000 vintage Grands Echezeaux...
Another "toast" to good wine, good food and good friends.
"Say cheese!"
For dessert...
The Cakery (on Burlingame Avenue) had a splendid apple tart...
So I made an ice cream of vanilla with cinnamon to pair with it.
A Muscat from Domaine du Mas Rouge was very fine with this...
And Kareasa offered a wee dram of a hugely smoky Islay malt.
Bruichladdich has a 5 year old whisky matured in old Petrus barrels.
This is a remarkable spirit...quite complex but very smoky.
And with that...we adjourned until next time!
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