Food Match-escargot

There is only one choice. Garlic wine from Rapazzini Winery in Gilroy, CA

Bi!! wrote:

Not sure what a marble is! But classic combo for snails with butter, parsley, and garlic (a Burgundian dish) is Chardonnay. I wouldn't break out a big Montrachet (even if I owned one), but maybe a Macon. I'd think: crisp no or light oak for my tastes.

If the garlic is well roasted or otherwise long cooked it tends to be rather mild and might work with a fairly full dry wine such as Chardonnay as Dale Williams suggested. If the garlic is raw or perhaps just briefly warmed, it can be very sharp and overcome nearly any wine. I might use a dry white I wanted to get rid of, since the garlic will hide it so well that you will not be likely to tell if you have a quality wine or not if you first taste the wine after eating a bit of the garlic.

I see no reason why one must try to match a wine to a dish always. Beer, and even vodka or aquavit will work well with many foods with extreme intensity. I think I would like to experiment with aquavit or an eau de vie de sapin, houx or gentiane. These very herbal plant eau de vie can be very difficult to find in the US. They are bone dry, very intense, and can be about as strong as some of the lighter vodkas. They need to be served ice cold, and about an ounce or two is plenty. But I would not go to the extreme of Devils Springs vodka, even if the garlic is raw . At 160 proof, or about 80% alcohol, it will live well up to the name, even if served ice cold. Even a classic Martini cocktail might work well - just gin, dry vermouth and perhaps a twist of lemon or a bit of bitters, or perhaps an olive. If you use a pickled tiny onion, it becomes a Gibson.

It's a snail wrapped en croute with the garlic and parsely butter inside along with the snail.

The pastry probably "smooths" the dish a bit, so you could probably safely do a bigger/better white with that dish, in my humble opinion.

It sounds as if the dish uses classic "snail butter" but the snail and compound butter is stuffed in pastry rather than in a snail shell. Much snail butter uses quite a bit of finely chopped raw garlic. The time required to cook the pastry will cook the garlic a bit and much of the flavor will be diluted by soaking into the pastry. Thus I would expect the garlic to be less sharp than raw garlic.. Also how much garlic is used is quite important. If you can not sample the dish before your dinner, then it might pay to have two drinks available. Then you can taste one of the snails in pastry before it is served and decide which wine or other beverage to open before the guests are served. Given the experiments many chefs make today, he/she might use just a tiny bit of garlic, perhaps long cooked, to make the garlic butter, or might use about as much raw garlic as butter used.

Hugh Johnson notes several French matches for snails in his 2008 Pocket Wine Book. However how close your snail dish will be to those eaten in any region of France is unknown. He suggests Rhone reds, such as Gigondas or Vacqueyras, or St-Veran or Aligote. He says that in the Midi, local Petits-Gris go with the local white, red, or rose wines. In Alsace he mentions Pinot Blanc and Muscat.

Almost experimented for you last night. Little French restaurant, Betsy not really drinking, a half bottle of Macon-Villages. For my appetizer I almost got escargots, in the classic Burgundian garlic butter. But the garlic sausage with lentils won out. Look forward to seeing what you do and how it matched.

Thanks to all for suggestions. I've been turley hunting for the past few days and I'll let you know on Sunday what I chose and how it fared.