Latour with Guinea Fowl?

P

Peter Creasey

Peter Creasey
Any thoughts, please, on Ch Latour 2000 with Guinea Fowl with Liquorice Braised Leeks, Morels, Rosemary, Spinach, Garlic Butter.

Thanks.

. . . . . Pete
 
Pete, I'd think that Guinea Fowl (you don't mention preparation, so I'm guessing a simple roast or something) would make an excellent tabula rasa for any sort of wine, red or white. The accompanying foods are fairly strongly flavored, so I'd imagine that a sturdy (and still young) wine like Latour would stand up to them just fine.

Mark Lipton
 
This is my note on Chateau Latour 2000 from March of this year. Maybe helpful to you.

A Wow wine even right out of the bottle. More pretty and polished around the edges of the mouth than one might expect from Chateau Latour. An impressive wine that also shut down a little bit after a two hour decant. I might decant this for just an hour or for 3 hours next time. It seemed like there was a little dip with 2 hours. It may have been that the food dish kind of hemmed it in a bit, instead of bringing it out more. You could wait on drinking this or start opening corks. It’s a good wine.

This is an wild overgeneralization, but across Bordeaux 2000 is on the other side of a generational and financial change, where big money has already been invested into new facilities and people are purposely trying to make ripe and "perfect" wines. The 2000 Latour is an example of this, and it is tasteable. This is not the 1995 Latour, which might actually complement Guinea Fowl better, and it is certainly not the 1961. Rusticity has been banished by 2000.
 
Brad, Guinea fowl is on the menu and the guests would appreciate the Latour '00.

Levi, thanks for the good info. Rightly or wrongly, I read you to be perhaps lukewarm about the pairing.

. . . . . Pete
 
originally posted by Peter Creasey:


Levi, thanks for the good info. Rightly or wrongly, I read you to be perhaps lukewarm about the pairing.
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I encounter people who have an idea of Chateau Latour as making unmoveable, very slow aging wines that are solid with impact of tannins in the mouth and give hints of old world rusticity. And in my own experience the 2000 vintage isn't evidence that supports that view. Whereas 1995 has a some rusticity. 1998 has solid tones that might read as stolid in some sense. The already mentioned 1961 pulls entire worlds together in grand, sweeping gesture. In comparison the 2000 is more polished and refined, frankly. More of a filet mignon wine.

Still, a delicious wine, and nothing wrong with drinking it now. Some people hesitate on 2000 First Growths, and today might be catching it on the younger, more vigorous side. But one can certainly already grasp the level and also enjoy the view of the potential of the wine.
 
How is the guinea hen being cooked? If a straight roast, while a guinea hen has some more flavor than a chicken, you should still think of roast chicken pairings. I would think more of a Burgundy kind of wine or, an older Bordeaux. But I doubt it will be as much of a mismatch as Barolo and Branzino.
 
the thread reminds me of an old joke in which a policeman apprehends a very drunk man stumbling around under a street light, looking for something. what did you lose? my watch. where? over there. why are you looking over here? there is more light here.

devil's advocate: both the wine expert and the chemistry professor are right, but where conclusions are concerned i am going to side with the professor.

i just had a great bottle of 95 latour within the past month, and while it is unquestionably more accessible and generally food-friendly due to what i'd concede to be a bit of old-fashioned rusticity, i don't believe it is a better pairing in this case.

there are significant chunks (35%?) of latour vineyards that are atypical for pauillac and are far more like what you'd find in st estephe and father north, and it is in these lands where the much-maligned-by-hollywood merlot excels so dramatically: delivering surprising power, but also a chewy texture laced with red-brick earthiness. This shows up in latour every now and then to a varying degree (i just had the 96 where you'd need a microscope to find it), but rarely to the extent that it does in 95. Beats me why, as I don't have the play-by-play of that season at fingertips, yet the symptoms in the glass are incontrovertible.

perhaps Pete will come to his senses and pull out a nice bottle of Volnay, but that aside i think the fact that the 00 is more slick/polished (both due to age and style as expertly described in the lost watch thread) will actually work in his favour. yeah, the 00 is "bigger" than the 95, but unless Pete is chopping up the poor bird into a stew, i'd stay clear of the latter's texture and heed the words of the professor who aptly pointed out that the juice is "still young."
 
FWIW, I had the 2002 Latour a couple of weeks ago and my impressions mirror Levi's (though I imagine what I had was less structured and powerful than the 2000). Very refined, polished, with some drying tannins on the backend; the primary fruit was framed with cedar and hints of graphite, but kept in balance with a nice acidic tension. I assumed the 2002 was so approachable because of the vintage, but Levi's note about the 2000 makes it sound like a change in winemaking is the primary reason. Highly enjoyable wine.

Of course, very different from the 1970 Figeac I brought. Certainly on the back-nine of its evolution, but while the Latour had that primary fruit and power, the Figeac had a delicate elegance, an autumnal, tertiary earthiness, and slightly fading fruit with a puff of smoky minerality becoming more prominent with time in the glass. Tannins were completely resolved with a silky texture and the acidity still provided a brisk freshness. The nose was just absolutely killer and beautifully expressive. Awesome wine (and I personally preferred it to the 2002 Latour).
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:

there are significant chunks (35%?) of latour vineyards that are atypical for pauillac and are far more like what you'd find in st estephe and father north, and it is in these lands where the much-maligned-by-hollywood merlot excels so dramatically: delivering surprising power, but also a chewy texture laced with red-brick earthiness.
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No need to hitchhike that far north when Leoville Las Cases has a sizable holding of M'rlot nearby.
 
In an ideal world I'd miss out liquorice, spinach and garlic, the first two in particular having mouth-numbing qualities which don't help great wine,but intelligent consumption will anyway sort out any difficulties. My bete noire with grand red wines from Burgundy, the northern Rhone and Burgundy is the almost unavoidable sweet-sour element that one finds in so much modern cooking.
 
originally posted by Tom Blach:
In an ideal world I'd miss out liquorice, spinach and garlic, the first two in particular having mouth-numbing qualities which don't help great wine,but intelligent consumption will anyway sort out any difficulties. My bete noire with grand red wines from Burgundy, the northern Rhone and Burgundy is the almost unavoidable sweet-sour element that one finds in so much modern cooking.
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In the words of Richard Olney, whom we both so much admire: simple wines with complex food, complex wines with simple food.
 
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
In the words of Richard Olney, whom we both so much admire: simple wines with complex food, complex wines with simple food.
Click to expand...

there is so much to admire about Richard Olney as a quick glance at my book shelves will support

however this view seems, at best, outdated. no?
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
In the words of Richard Olney, whom we both so much admire: simple wines with complex food, complex wines with simple food.
Click to expand...

there is so much to admire about Richard Olney as a quick glance at my book shelves will support

however this view seems, at best, outdated. no?
Click to expand...

Yes. Like so many anodyne truisms this is perhaps sometimes true, but also false. Yeah, overly simplistic.
 
originally posted by mark e:
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
In the words of Richard Olney, whom we both so much admire: simple wines with complex food, complex wines with simple food.
Click to expand...

there is so much to admire about Richard Olney as a quick glance at my book shelves will support

however this view seems, at best, outdated. no?
Click to expand...

Yes. Like so many anodyne truisms this is perhaps sometimes true, but also false. Yeah, overly simplistic.
Click to expand...

certainly, but i also meant "dated" in a sense that back then one did not obsess with pairings to the extent that we do; in fact i am not sure they do in france to this day, based on conversations and dinners with gallic friends
 
I dunno, works fine for me. If I'm having a great Burgundy or Northern Rhône or Nebbiolo, I'd stick with a roast chicken or simple steak or maybe leg of lamb. Even when Gérard Chave cooked for me, the ingredients were amazing but the food was straightforward, notwithstanding the fact that he had studied with Alain Chapel.
 
As always, depends on the details and what we mean by 'simple'. If you think about it in terms of number of ingredients/flavors, much of the restaurant European food is 'simple', even the refined Michelin-starred dishes with subtle sauces for the meat.

Whereas a more 'complex' dish like something exuberantly-flavorful from India or Thailand would go with simpler wines.
 
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by mark e:
originally posted by Pavel Tchichikov:
originally posted by Claude Kolm:
In the words of Richard Olney, whom we both so much admire: simple wines with complex food, complex wines with simple food.
Click to expand...

there is so much to admire about Richard Olney as a quick glance at my book shelves will support

however this view seems, at best, outdated. no?
Click to expand...

Yes. Like so many anodyne truisms this is perhaps sometimes true, but also false. Yeah, overly simplistic.
Click to expand...

certainly, but i also meant "dated" in a sense that back then one did not obsess with pairings to the extent that we do; in fact i am not sure they do in france to this day, based on conversations and dinners with gallic friends
Click to expand...
Yes. Absolutely. In the couple of decades i lived in Italy i never heard anyone pay much attention to it. Arneis was something you would guzzle while looking at the menu, then a bottle of dolcetto, followed by Barolo or Barbaresco when the food arrived. Sometimes an older bottle from the cellar after dinner. Until the 90s it was hard to order wines from other regions.
 
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