Match of the week

Guineafowl with cherries and Beaujolais

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on June 20 2011 at 20:38

I’ve been so busy catching up after my Alsace trip that I haven’t had much time for new food and wine discoveries but here’s one we had at Les Temps Changent in Chalons-en-Champagne, a hotel we frequently stop at to break the journey through France.

It was a guineafowl leg stuffed with a white boudin-type farce, served with a light jus and some warmed through fresh cherries and went perfectly with a half bottle of Morgon. (Which one? Afraid I can’t remember. After four full-on days in Alsace it was nice to order something without feeling I had to make notes about it.)

A word of warning though. The pairing worked because the sauce was not too intensely cherry flavoured. If that had been the case it might have stripped the cherry flavours out of the wine. Or, if the wine had been sweeter and more intense, like a New Zealand Pinot Noir, for example, it would have made the combination too sweet and detracted from the flavour of the guineafowl.

A Belgian-style cherry beer (Kriek) would also have been good.

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