Reims to Nimes

If you came here hoping for a race writeup of the Firehouse 5K, let me not waste any time in disappointing you: 19:53, 6th overall, 1st over 50. Predicts a 3:10 at Boston which absolutely won't happen because I have no intention of running Boston full-on. Enough about that.

Instead, I'm going to write about how I celebrated passing the Q. I have a few friends who can comprehend both what the Q represents and also appreciate a good celebratory meal, but none more so than Bill & Laura Langton. Therefore, we had them over for dinner tonight. Kate and Laura are somewhat indifferent to French wine but Bill & I are quite passionate about it. The theme of the night was Riems to Nimes. In my mind, that corridor represents the absolute pinnacle of culinary excellence.

I tried to come up with a menu that followed geography north to south or vice versa, but found that a bit unwieldy. So, I settled for just keeping the wines from somewhere between Champagne and Provence and then paired the courses as best I could. Here's the final menu:

Appetizers: 2014 Domain Servin Chablis Les Pargues with Crab dip and chips. While paring seafood with a chardonnay is obvious enough, I probably wouldn't have thought of this simply because of the standard maxim: what grows together goes together. As Chablis is a land-locked appellation, crab wasn't even on my radar. However, the more I read about it, the more I kept seeing that Chablis and crab are made for each other. It's true, the match was perfect.

Salad: 2015 Miraval Cotes de Provence blush with Spring Greens, Goat Cheese, Cranberries, Pecans, and Olive Oil. Another revelation. This course was added when I found out (at the last minute) that Yaya's evening plans were cancelled so we were going to have both her and her friend at dinner. I originally had the salad as part of the next course (baking it directly on the flatbread). I asked about how one could best bring a Provence Blush into a salad course and Kevin from the Wine and Cheese Place suggested not using dressing at all, but rather feature goat cheese with just a bit of olive oil. Total home run. This pairing was sublime.

Intermediate: 2009 Moulin a Vent Jules Desjourneys with pesto, bacon, and onion flatbread. As much as Bill's CdP was fab, this was the wine of the night for me. Maybe it's just because I've never had a Beaujolais of this quality. I expected it to be good because it came with a good recommendation from a reliable source (a master sommelier who knows my preferences) but, damn, it was really, really, really good. And, the flatbread I made to go with it was one of my better efforts as well. My usual sourdough crust seems to like more savory sauces like pesto (for a normal red-sauce pizza, I use standard active dry yeast). The bacon did a great job of bringing out the deeper notes of the wine and the onions, well, what's not to like about caramelized onions?

Main: 1998 Bosquet des Papes Châteauneuf du Pape with slow cooked sirloin and peppers over cabbage. Yeah, this was pretty much the bomb. Bill supplied the wine. The stew was pretty straightforward. The one twist that worked great was that, rather than throwing the bell peppers in the croc pot with the meat, I roasted them separately and then added them as a garnish. I think they retained a lot more flavor that way. The other thing was searing the meat in the fat left over from the bacon.

Dessert: Non Vintage Bollinger Champagne with bread pudding. Ok, bread pudding isn't even French, much less from the Rhone corridor, but Kate likes it and Bill makes it really well. So, since he insisted on contributing a course, that's what we went with. And it was super good. I generally buy grower Champagnes as they tend to be better deals. Kate gave me this bottle for Christmas and, while I'm sure I could have found a comparable grower wine for less, this was certainly ample evidence that the big houses do know what they are doing. Meanwhile, Bill's bread pudding is quite good and his sauces (yes, plural, he brought three) are crazy good.

Yeah, it was a good evening for sure.