A Correze Dinner

Quintessential Ian selection!

Hey Bill where else are you plann> 2007 Bergerac blanc - vin plastique - nice and showing some complexity

Mike, I won't be heading too far south (as I recall that's where you live?) this time

Maybe down to Pau, but we'll see. Mostly to Madiran, Cahors, Bergerac, some of the lesser known AOCs

I was dubious about serving this as an apéro, because Jacquie had said that it wasn't as good at it had been last year. But then decided that as we'd got 10 litres of it, we had better finish it before moving on! The wine was one of the very last 5 wine boxes of Ch La Maurigne's "basic" white before the new batch is ready this month. One could argue it shouldn't have been sold even at the ludicrously cheap price of €2.80 a litre, but honestly as Bill said it's not a bad wine.

This was in fact a double consommé de cepes, with duck simmered with dried cepes, but the cepes were by no means dominent. As the consommé was clarified with minced duck breast, that element of the flavour came forward nicely.

And this is my real reason for writing. An observant reader will have noticed that the foie gras _followed_ the meat course so that we could accompany it with a sweet wine (or two) rather than serving it at the beginning of the meal.

Speaking personally - though the others (possibly being polite) agreed, I found that despite this being the fourth of six courses, the meal was not in any way too heavy and the foie gras went brilliantly well at that stage of the meal. I knew that this "Cold Roti" was a tradition at the end of the 19th early 20th century, and frankly I think we were wrong to drop this tradition especially if the foie gras it to be matched against a sweet wine.

Thanks to Bill for his comments, and thanks to him also for taking us out to lunch today. We had originally intended to go to the St Jacques, our local fine dining spot, but they're on holiday at the moment. So we booked ourselves into the Rendezvous des Pecheurs, a smallish private hotel with large dining room, overlooking the Dordogne river in the middle of nowhere. They were bung full, and we were glad we'd booked.

Splendid meal, though I think I might just have to give them a little lesson on making crepes Suzette! Nice wines - Ch Laulerie - Montravel, of which we had a couple of bottles first as an aperitif and then with the first course. That was followed by a very good Cahors, Ch la Pineraie "Cuvée Authentique" 2003. This was a huge great wine, with legs that would look good on a sprinter, and a nose that came galloping out of the glass and was all black fruits. Still slightly tannic, it was still a baby - being made from Malbec - but being from such a hot year, it had clearly come forward fairly fast. I think a visit is called for!

-- All the best Fatty from Forges

Thanks for those notes, Bill. It sounds like it was a great meal chez Hoares. Please convey our best wishes to Ian and Jacquie should you read this in time.

Ah, yes, I well remember this wine from our visit to Forgès in '01. At the time, it was excellent but an infant, so now I suppose that it's an attractive adolescent ;-)

Best wishes, Mark Lipton

thanks for the notes. Around here the few Bergeracs we see not especially appealing, I think from Ian's posts they are some of the less appealing producers.