Saturday, January 18, 2014

Burgundy Portfolio en primeur tasting, 14th Jan

On Tuesday evening I made my way over to Dukes Hotel in St James's Place, tucked down a little alley beside the Rothschild offices where I used to audit a couple of charities a few years ago. The Rothschild properties can be identified by the five arrows motif which also appears on their wines, and the highlight of those audits was access to the very fine coffee machine which they had for the benefit of the investment gurus working elsewhere in the building.

At Dukes, I was given directions to proceed round the corner and down two flights of stairs where a happy sight greeted my eyes - a room full of wine and people tasting it. There was no Oz Clarke this year but I think I must have arrived just after Tim Atkin as I spent the entire tasting either one step in front of him or one step behind. The tables were as follows:

  • a mixed bag of whites from growers not present
  • ACC's new discovery Pascal Clement who is based in Savigny-les-Beaune and used to work with Coche-Dury
  • Vincent Perrin from Volnay
  • Fabrice Bouard-Bonnefoy from Chassagne-Montrachet who I hadn't met before 
  • Henri Audiffred from Vosne-Romanee
  • Domaine de la Choupette from Santenay
  • a table of mixed reds from growers not present
  • Florent Garaudet from Monthelie
  • Sebastian Odoul-Coquard from Morey-St-Denis

The full offer is on the Burgundy Portfolio's website here. Look out for fabulous Lord of the Rings style maps! It contains wines from a total of 16 growers, and G and I worked out that we've bought wines from 14 of them this year, and have bought wines in previous years from the two we've skipped on this occasion. I'm not going to mention everything I've gone for this year, but will pick out a few of my personal highlights. 

Whites

Chablis 1er cru Mont de Milieu from Nathalie Fevre. This showed exceptionally well and is seriously good value for what it is. We'll never forget our exciting day with Nathalie in September and I still have the fossil of a mussel which she gave me!

Bourgogne Blanc from Sylvie Joly. I filled my boots with the 2010, and the 2012 seemed as good if not better. It's a Puligny in all but name.

Chassagne-Montrachet 1er cru En Remilly from Domaine Bouard-Bonnefoy stood out for me, while G went for the 1er cru Les Chenevottes instead, so we'll be able to have a pretentious horizontal tasting in a few years' time!

Reds

Henri Audiffred's Beaune had an extraordinary nose reminiscent of tinned fruit and/or mango, and the Vosne-Romanee "Aux Champs Perdrix" was magnificent - it's hard to believe it's not a premier cru. I adore pretty much everything he makes so it's very difficult to choose. Fortunately G has picked up some of the other appellations too. 

I liked the Bourgogne Rouge from Jean-Claude Rateau very much, it seemed like a mini Beaune to me, while Aloxe-Corton from Maison en Belles Lies also impressed me again. 

Finally, the wines from Odoul-Coquard were sensational. Admittedly I may be slightly biased as ACC kindly invited us for dinner with Sebastian at Chabrot on Sunday night and he produced some Bourgogne Blanc 2012, a Gevrey-Chambertin villages and a Charmes-Chambertin grand cru both from the 2010 vintage, which are still very young but helped us see what these wines are going to be like. 


On this occasion, although dribbling occurred when I tasted the village Gevrey, I went for the Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru Aux Combottes (influenced by the Dujac 2007 we had at Otto's last Friday) and finally I pushed the boat out with the Clos de Vougeot which will have to be put away for many years. "It has to be had" read my notes. I know I won't regret it!

Charmes-Chambertin, 2010 from Odoul-Coquard
G and I agreed that this was the best en primeur tasting we've been to and possibly the best tasting in general, ever. The quality of the vintage shines through. Congrats to ACC for finding so many delicious things at very reasonable prices considering the circumstances and the competition, and thanks to the growers for making the effort to come over to London and let us taste them. 

Afterwards, G and I grabbed a taxi to Byron on Store Street where we pored over the list and did some amicable horse-trading while consuming posh burger and fries. A fitting end to an amazing evening!


Sunday, January 12, 2014

Dinner at Otto's, 10th Jan

After our spectacular evening at the Shiori in November, it was G's turn to take me somewhere nice, and it was decided that we should attempt the Canard a la Presse at Otto's. G discovered this restaurant on the Gray's Inn Road some time ago. It's been going for two years but after the reviewers finally woke up in the summer it's become very difficult to get in and we had a choice of this Friday or some time in late March - I assume they must have had a cancellation on Friday. We grabbed the opportunity, and when we arrived G was greeted by Otto like a long-lost friend.

The famous duck press
The room is decorated in a bohemian style with vintage French movie posters, Victorian lampshades, some quite weird furniture and a big stone horse's head looking over the room. We had a table near the kitchen so I could see the chefs at work and also the duck press. The Canard a la Presse is a famous dish served at La Tour D'Argent in Paris, which I've never visited but G has. Apparently they no longer prepare it in front of you there, but Otto does. On the menu, it says "The Canard à la Rouenaise is an antique and sophisticated art form you need to see prepared and taste at least once in your life." There were other appealing things on the menu too (including a fillet of wild boar with a crust of pain d'epices) so it's not compulsory to have the duck, but on this occasion, that was what we wanted.

The duck was brought out from the kitchen and shown to us. It was enormous. These are very special ducks, and later on the waitress told us that they are bigger at this time of year. I believe it was over 3 kg, and it looked nothing like the sort of duck you find in the shops.


Otto started by making the sauce with butter, some hefty sloshes of madeira, port and red wine, and stock made from previous ducks. Meanwhile we had a dilemma as to whether to have a starter - but since the duck takes over an hour to prepare, and we were already ravenous, we went ahead. Otto advised a light starter and "not too much bread". We followed this advice and G had crayfish on a pike mousse while I had scallop carpaccio. Both went down very well. Mine was refreshing and pure, and certainly left space for the duck. With our starters we had a bottle of white Beaune 1er cru Aigrots from Domaine de Montille. We had hoped it would be the 2007 vintage but it turned out they had moved on to the 2009. Nevertheless it was very pleasurable and went well with the food.

Once the duck was cooked, Otto carved it beside our table and then we all crowded round the duck press (usually a two man job, but three of them were operating it on our evening) which is screwed down to extract the juices from the carcass which are then incorporated into the sauce. It was exciting to see this being done, and some people at another table came over to see what was going on.


I knew that the duck was served "en deux services" so when we were presented with the chopped-up liver on toast, with a little cup of 15 year old Henriques & Henriques madeira, I assumed that this was the first of the two. That duck liver was one of the most delicious things I've ever eaten, and the madeira went very well with it. But it turned out I was wrong - this was really just an amuse gueule and apparently at La Tour d'Argent they don't give you the liver. I shan't bother going there then!


The actual first service was the breast, which had had its skins removed and been carved into slices, served with the delicious sauce and some "pommes soufflees" which I'd never encountered before - they were like little pillows of potato - and some green beans. It was all excellent, as was the wine G chose, a Gevrey-Chambertin 1er cru "Aux Combottes" 2007 from Domaine Dujac. I haven't had the privilege to drink much Dujac but may need to reassess as this was wonderful. It jumped out of the glass with lively aromas and was very complex and interesting, and much lighter than I'd expected it to be, not heavy at all. Every mouthful was fantastic.


It's worth noting that the wine list is extremely reasonable, as he applies a fixed margin to drink the good stuff. BBR are selling the Dujac for £810 for 6 which works out at £135 a bottle, although I found it somewhere else for just under £100. On Otto's wine list, it's £147. You can't argue with that!

Blurry Soft focus photo of pommes soufflees
Once we'd finished the first service, we had a short pause before the second, and Otto came over and chatted with us. G has been to lots of Parisian restaurants and they spent some time talking about Maxim's where Otto used to work. He also told us that he was in a very good mood as he'd had a big party in for lunch the previous day and they had eaten three ducks (!) as well as various other things. It was clearly a VIP but he didn't tell us who - very discreet. Apparently Otto wouldn't normally do three ducks for a table, he did it for them as a special favour, but two ducks is not out of the ordinary so if there are four of you, that's an option...

Then the legs were served. It seems he has been tweaking how they are presented, and for us, they had been deconstructed so we had a bowl of what I can only describe as leg morsels. This worked for me, as I suspect hacking our way through a duck leg at this stage in the evening would have been quite hard work. Accompanying this was a bowl of tiny little pieces of duck skin which had curled up (Otto had removed the skin using the back of a spoon), and croutons. Again it was absolutely amazing, but this time we were defeated early on.

I cheekily suggested to G that we might request a doggy bag, and they were very happy to do this, so the leg, skin and sauce were all put in individual cartons for us to take home and we ate them along with a salad last night. Otto advised spreading the sauce on toast (he initially suggested brioche, but agreed that Poilane would work) which went down a treat.

Legs etc. being cooked up for dinner the next evening
We opted out of pudding, but nevertheless were given a scoop of ice cream and a glass of 30 year old Hidalgo Pedro Ximenez to go with. The PX was fantastic, very smooth, and not sickly sweet like most PX. I don't know whether all this generosity is normal or because we were spending a lot that evening or because G was a supporter from the early days. Anyway, it was very kind of them.

All in all, this was a wonderful evening with an unusual combination of formality and informality, atmosphere, theatre, extraordinary food and first rate wine. It's not something you'd want to do every night, but perhaps once a year... Thanks G!

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Happy New Year!



Just a quick one today - more to follow soon. G and I spent New Year's Eve at A de V Towers; no performing seals for us this year, but we did have some great food and drink. We kicked things off with this 2002 blancs de blancs champagne from Jean Comyn. It had really come on since the last time we tasted it, which was at an SPNS dinner back in May 2010. The general verdict on that occasion was that it needed another 5 years. We didn't quite manage to give it that, but found it much improved. It was light, attractive, and fully mature.

We discussed comparisons and agreed that it was similar to Delamotte. I can't remember exactly how much it cost but seem to recall that it was quite good value for a vintage champagne, so it wasn't really fair to compare it to Krug, Dom Perignon etc. It wasn't "Great Champagne" and wasn't particularly complex, but I enjoyed it and it got the evening off to a suitably festive good start.

In the background you can see Clive Coates's new book, My Favorite Burgundies, which kept G out of mischief all evening spotting typos. I was given this by my parents for Christmas, and it's yet another treasure trove of information. I had thought it was going to be a revised edition of the Bible aka his 2008 book on Burgundy, but this isn't the case - it doesn't attempt to cover everyone but goes into more detail on the finer vineyards, producers, and vintages. I'm sure it will be very useful as we head towards en primeur season, and also for the Premier Cru Project.