Dinner at Bistro de L'Hotel - Nicholas Silvers

The Bistro at L'Hotel has long been my favorite place to eat in Beaune.  The ingredients are bought fresh every day and one can tell immediately.  The made from scratch foie gras is a must.  It is everything anyone would look for in foie.  The baked chicken is simple and delicious which I think can be said for anything that comes out of the tiny kitchen.  This is a place that you can go to for food alone, but we had three wines that were to say the least interesting.

We started with a 1939 Faiveley Romanee St Vivant.  I can't seem to help myself when I find war years wines and while this was not a miracle in wine making, it was certainly worth the shot.  The nose was not very pleasant nor did that change in the glass.  However, I found the wine to be very interesting on the pallet.  I half expected it to be materized, but quite enjoyed it.  Not everyone at the table agreed but such is life in tasting wines with age.  Clearly it had seen better days, but along with the foie gras it was pleasurable to drink and did not peak and fall once opened.  All in all an interesting exprience.

We moved on to a 1972 Tortochet et Fils Chambertin.   Wines from 1972 are a better than they get credit for.  This was a great bottle of Chambertin from a less known producer, and it exuded all the qualities of Chambertin and still had freshness and liveliness. 

Last, we had a 1988 Peirazeau-Groffier Chambertin Clos de Beze.  When we opened the bottle it smelled like trash.  Aftert putting the glasses aside for an hour, the nose blew off and turned quite lovely and it turned out to be a charming bottle of wine. 

While none of these were show stoppers, they were good to really good and very educational.  I am not a big preponent of wines needing to be paired with food but in the case of all of these, I really do believe it enhanced them versus drinking them on their own.