Nothing wrong with a Porterhouse lunch
Okay, now if you are a faithful reader of the bugga bloggy-blog it could sound like I am always having lunch.
Well, you may not be so wrong about that. I adore lunch. Infact I LOVE lunch as it should be, vivo LUNCH!
It’s always after breakfast and happens to be the first meal of the day that I can enjoy a good glass of wine. Well, before dinner of course, and you never know both meals sometimes even manage to merge together as one long beautiful lunchi-dinnery kind of thing. Call it what you will. One o’clock is fine thanks, where are we going?
Our friends at 67 P-M know a bit about steak, as well as ‘faine waine’, and this is where I headed last week for a straight forward dam-good traditional lunch.
Oysters to start with from Galway (IRE) and all washed down with pink Bollinger 1998 (FR). My luncheon companion tells me that it is made up of 68% Pinot Noir and 32% Chardonnay, and he should know as he has drunk a lot of this wine. For me it was a light salmon colored rosé with red berry and floral flavors on the nose, whereas the palate is still vibrant with a tautness that balances the acidity and mousse. Good with the oysters. Not my natural choice, but it worked well.
Followed by a delicious bottle of 2001 Ch.Beaucastel Blanc that I had stashed for a moment like today. It could not have been a better bottle. A light yellowy Rousanne hew. Lemon, pear skin, jasmine mineral nose. Mouth puckering richness and vivacity. Weighty, very long almost palate-staining finish. More please.
Burgundy and Claret up next, and in that order. 2000 Jean Grivot’s Nuits St Georges 1er Cru ‘Les Roncieres’ showed us a medium red, with a hint of amber on the rim. Complexity found on a dumb nose at this stage, which after some time in the jug, blew off blackberry, plum, mocha and some floweriness. Lush and silky in the mouth, with sweet fruit nicely framed by perfectly integrated acidity. Offers very good depth of flavor for the vintage. Finishes almost sweet and persistent, with the softest of tannins that agreed with our British cheese board. Obviously it needed the breather.
The bottle of 1998 Ch.Mouton Rothschild we drank with the beef. There are good bottles of this and sometimes very good bottles of this. We were lucky! Powerful Mouton nose. Cassis palate with roast coffee bean, leathery, licorice and looong (LLL). Terrific grip and sufficient tannins to keep this baby going thru to the next generation.
It was here at 67 P-M that they had to explain to me exactly what a Porterhouse steak is/was. Easy, let me share with you, it’s a larger version of a T-Bone steak carved from the larger portion of the tenderloin (map above). Unless you are Monsieur Mangetout, it is also there for sharing, and preferably cooked on the grill only juicy please, or this side of medium done, if one’s guest does not like the sight of blood on his plate, that is.
MMmmooooO!