Community Tasting Note

• The Gilded Sage wrote:

  July 14, 2013 - My dear friend, the Vicomte André de Toulouse, likes to celebrate Bastille day each year with the sort of feast that would surely have landed all participants in the guillotine.
  
  This particular vintage of Yquem (which I have tasted on only one other occasion, after far too much Champagne to have formed a coherent note) was served at the end of this year's meal with a pan-seared foie gras of most singular provenance. The name and location of the farm from which it had been procured were kept steadfastly secret by my host and his butler. I was told only that it was not AOC classified, owing to the fact that its fowl had been raised exclusively on a diet of black truffles. One can imagine, but can scarcely describe, the richness and complexity such feed imparts. "Qu'ils mangent du foie gras!" bellowed the incorrigible Vicomte, and silver plates of this magnificent preparation were brought round with glasses of the amber Sauternes.
  
  The wine: Well, it too was magnificent, caressing the palate as fine silk sheets do the body—deliciously, richly, and yet rather coolly. While mature, it remains taut—even severe. I was reminded of a stern, aging matron of French who used to come to the manor for my weekly lesson; age had softened her, but not very much; she wore scarves and smoked long and thin cigarettes; unused to nonsense she employed a firm touch. Well, you can imagine...
  
  A final note: for all the whimsy of this particular feast, there was also admirable care taken in its preparation and design. The final dish, described here, brought full circle a progression of almost architectural intricacy, and echoed earlier courses of duck a l'orange (served with a '45 La Romanée) and a consommé of juvenile truffle hog.
  
  I am most grateful to my host for arranging this event. He really is a most remarkable sybarite. What a happy miracle that his noble line should have escaped the proletariat's blade!

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3 Comments

• cookiefiend commented:

  9/30/13, 1:28 PM - Lovely note, but you have a contextual error with the word 'taught'. Should be 'taut'... ;-)

• The Gilded Sage commented:

  10/2/13, 3:29 PM - @cookiefiend: Thank you, my good sir (or madame?). The error has been corrected. One shudders to think what one's tutors would say. But, then, I always was an indifferent student. I took a third, you know, but it really was due only to the indulgence of my college Warden that I made it though those three years at all. A third in Classics, but a first in pleasure we used to say!

• jdtonic commented:

  10/1/18, 10:55 PM - Goddamit, That is one tasty tasting note, by Gum and by God!
  
  Gracias, Gilt-Amigo.
  
  [Fuck the Proles-Thin the Herd-Smoke a Bowl]

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