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S01E02 | Le Bec-Fin, Pairing

Written By: ClassicWines.com Team on Monday, March 19, 2007

Brian Freedman:Welcome to the Classic Wines Minute brought to you by ClassicWines.com, I’m Brian Freedman. We’re here again at Le Bec-Fin in Center City, Philadelphia, and again we’re lucky enough to be joined by Christophe Tassan, who is the French Master Sommelier and General Manager here. He also is considered one of the top French Sommeliers, I would say in the world, we’re going to make you blush on camera, but certainly, extremely well respected in his field.

Today, we’re actually going to be working on a very interesting food and wine pairing. We have here a Saffron Risotto with a beautiful Chorizo Emulsion, and I don’t know if you can see this on camera, but there is this wonderful foam on top, and you’ll see a lot of these foams these days in some very, very high-end restaurants. So, a dish like this, it might present some problems if you’re scared to enlist the help of the Sommelier at the restaurant, which is why Christophe is the perfect person to ask because you have the Saffron, which some people might not be terribly familiar with, so how do you pair that? You have the texture of the Risotto, it’s going to be very creamy, very luscious, but then you have the Chorizo thrown in there, so then there’s the issue of the smoke, maybe a little bit of heat. So, why don’t you take us through what you’ve decided would pair best with this today?

Christophe Tassan:Thank you so much, because you just give to everybody the perfect way and easy way to find a wine -- to choose a wine with the menu or the dish. Now, you just have to understand, to try to find the picture of the plate, of the dish. You described the rice as a smooth texture, you just mentioned the foam, the foam is to bring a kind of feeling, a light feeling, it’s not a heavy sauce, a salty creamy, the foam is made with butter, so they reduce the -- take out the juice from the Chorizo and they add some butter and they mix it with the 02:20 and that give the foam. You were talking about the Saffron, Saffron is one of the main taste in this course, spices and food goes well.

Brian Freedman:Right.

Christophe Tassan:So, Saffron means young vintage.

Brian Freedman:Okay.

Christophe Tassan:Or you can go in very old vintage, that time the food becomes kind of spicy or dry fruit and you can play, but food and spice goes well, (2:42) spices.

Brian Freedman:Sure.

Christophe Tassan:So, you can choose a young vintage in a aromatic grape or wine. You were talking about texture so not as green as crispy as a (2:54) selection, it’s kind of buttery, and texture of the rice have to be (3:01) by a wine, as in a buttery way or so and mild, that’s the another picture. After the salty and smoky taste of the Chorizo, just the real (3:15) perception feeling, that brings the (3:19) or maybe of the wine you have to find. So, what’s buttery in the wine, what’s fruity, young vintage, maybe not in a perfect cold, cold place -- the choice is go with the wine, it is Gruner Veltliner, this is a specific grape from Austria and Austria even if it’s a cold climate there, you are able to find mild wines.

Brian Freedman:Absolutely.

Christophe Tassan:Because of the grape, (3:44) vintage, maybe it has 2003 in France, 2004 in Southern Austria was this feature, so you get kind of over matured wine and this grape is Gruner Veltliner, is close to Rissley (3:56) to make short cut. So, you pair the -- you married the same way the seasoning of the -- you just follow the chef’s mind, chef’s sprit to bring the dish and you had the wine in (4:09) same picture.

Brian Freedman:Right, and just from smelling this wine -- I mean it’s -- it will be a very interesting complement, at least from the aromatic standpoint, with that Saffron because we were saying earlier -- I mean there is certainly some white peach in this, there is…

Christophe Tassan:There is, there is definitely white peach, poach peach, its the same thing, over matured peach, not green, that give the sweet feeling, not sweet sugar, but sweet feeling in the mind picture.

Brian Freedman:Right, which will contrast beautifully with both the Saffron and that smokiness from the Chorizo. So, we have texturally, you were saying its much softer than Gruner Veltliner sometimes tend to be.

Christophe Tassan:Yes.

Brian Freedman:Well, let’s taste this and see how we make out.

Christophe Tassan:Please, let’s try.

Brian Freedman:(5:02), goes to the best part of the job Christophe.

Christophe Tassan:Don’t tell anybody it’s not the job. Even if you choose a good Chorizo, really an intense one, you get -- the smoky (5:16) can go with the mineral taste of the wine, often you have chalk in the brown Loess, this one is coming from Loess. Loess is powder granite, so you have the mineral content in the one, that goes often pretty well with the smoky -- something smoky Salmon, it goes with the Salmon Mousse, Smoked Salmon or Crispy cakes, pies, you can do lot of things with Salmon.

Brian Freedman:Now, the flavor profile of this would give us a lot of room to sort of play around with pairings, what I’m struck with is, that very, very intense Saffron flavor and this hit of salt, which just brings the whole thing to life, and the softness the texture of this Gruner Veltliner, it really -- it takes the edge off of it, I mean the pairing could not possibly be better when it comes with this wine, so this is absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much.

Christophe Tassan:(6:12)?

Brian Freedman:Absolutely, we’ll be finishing this once the camera gets turned off. Again, Christophe, thank you so much for having us, its been our pleasure.

Christophe Tassan:My pleasure.

Brian Freedman:Again, on behalf of ClassicWines.com this has been the Classic Wines Minute, I’m Brian Freedman. Cheers.

Christophe Tassan:Cheers.

Total Duration: 07 Minutes.

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