Team Foucault / Kwiatkoski
Quail breast stuffed with quail sausage, potato, melted onion bacon hash, bing cherry, cranberry sauce, glazed chestnuts, and smoked marcona almond sauce, served with Cristom 2009 Mt. Jefferson Cuvée Pinot Noir Willamette Valley, Oregon, USA.
This is a bigger wine with more alcohol and a terrific, persistent, savoury finish. This tastes like it has had some more age in the barrel than the Galpin Peak. You can detect the herbaceous note that is characteristic of Cristom, and the earthiness really comes through in notes of mushroom, dried grass, and underbrush. This wine is a little wilder than the Roncevie, with the fruit coming through in dried cherry notes.
Winning flavours: This pairing is a marriage made in heaven: the cranberry and bing cherry flavours in the sauce, along with the thyme, really echo the flavours of the wine. The dish is really characteristic of fall flavours, and plays off the earthy notes of the wine. The dish makes me want to smell the wine, which echoes back all the notes in the dish. The almond sauce brings out so many flavours in the wine: smokiness, underbrush, and exotic spices, like cardamom. www. banvilleandjones. com 43