Ok, last night I experienced the Maison Borie, if you are ever in Lyon
you must try it. The dinner was prearranged and all wines were served
blind. I have a terrible cold, luckily most wines had a strong
aromatic punch and they made it through...

Chateau de Malle Sauternes 99, served with pan fried escalope of foie
gras on a cream of squash. I managed to identify the wine as
Sauternes, but having seen the wine list (2 choices) I thought it was
Cru Barrejats 96. Wrong. A classic (and often wrong) match, but here
it worked well, plenty of acidity and very strong aroma of cooked
fruit despite the young age.

Ch. Tour Blanche 1998 with scallops stuffed with raw oysters on thin
slices of green apple and a Bowmore whisky cream. The iodine of the
oysters went wonderfully with what I thought was a Ste Croix du Mont,
but turned out to be another Sauternes, more subtle, more mineral.

Condrieu by Francois Merlin (year?) with sea bass on fingerling
potatoes, mussels, cockles. Wow, what a wine, strong fruit and strong
floral aromas well balanced (rare in Condrieu) with oak well
integrated, a marvel of a condrieu. I identified the appellation, not
the producer, previously unknown to me.

Two wines, different matches. Lamarche Canon 2000, elegant Canon
Fronsac with tannins very present, needs more aging but the match
worked out, rack of lamb with reduced juices and lots of spice. If the
Bordeaux (I could not guess beyond the region) calmed the power of the
dish, the opposite happened with wine number 2, a bombshell of animal
spicy peppery aromas that combined with the sauce to create sheer
taste bombardment that lasted for minutes in your mouth. This
extraterrestrial wine was a Cotes du Rhone Villages St Maurice, cuvee
Renaissance, a GSM made according to the tenets of "cosmoculture" by
Philippe Viret. The metaphysics leaves me baffled, but the result is a
wine that lets everythign through, totally open, odours wafting around
the table even despite the damn cold.

Three desserts without wine, a yellow chartreuse granita served in a
cup made of Valrhona chocolate, a glass of roasted peach, biscuits and
almond mousse, and a chocolate browny with avocado sauce topped with a
mandrake sherbet. I am a dessert man...

Grand finale, Manuel Viron pulls out his friend Jean Louis Chave's 96
Ermitage Vin de Paille, rich amber concentrate of cooked fruit and
splendid acidity.


Mike