Tonight’s supper, on cool night with a good fire in the fireplace, was chicken soup - with carrots, wild rice, onions, & garlic; accompanied with smoked mackeral filets with tapenade and coarse-grained Dijon mustard. Wine was a 2000 Tablas Creek ‘Panoplie’ (55% Mourvedre, 30% Syrah, 15% Grenache)) - fill less than a cm below the cork; cork saturared about an 1/8 inch; deep ruby in color with a very thin light edge; rich, complex dark fruit in nose & flavors; interesting mid-palate with bright fruit, amazingly good acidity, & little tannic sense; and a long, rich dark fruit finish. It was quite nice with the meal, and has a long life ahead of it. I hope we have more.
Then for dessert we had a very ripe Comice pear with grappa. We started with a new bottle of Banfi Grappa di Montalcino, with the very ripe pear it wasn’t as hot as previous Banfis. Carollee finished with the Banfi, while I had a glass of Badia a Coltibuono wood-aged Grappa di Sangiovese. It was also very good with the ripe pear.
holy mother of gastronomical heaven, does this sound delicious!