For Canard
I absolutely adore ducks; I’ve nibbled on their webs and sucked on their tongues in Chinese palaces. I’ve eaten their livers “with some fava beans and a nice Chianti” in Italian cucinas. I’ve chased Peking ducks to the four corners of the globe. Legs, breasts, it doesn’t matter; just about any way that you want to slice, cook, and serve them to me, I’ll be back for seconds.
As wine-food goes, duck is just about the perfect protein from its skin, legs, breasts, liver; whether fat and juicy or lean and gamey, rich, spicy, tender, or crispy. You can coat them in salt-cake and herbs, flay them and wrap their skin in little crepes, cover them with pastry in a terrine, you can stuff their innards into little pockets of Ravioli pasta, smoke them whole in tea leaves, or smear their breasts and thighs in sauces made from cepes, oranges, plums, figs, quinces, Gaeng Phed Yang (Thai Red Curry), Hoi Sin, Szechuan peppers, even chocolate in one famous Belgium restaurant.
I love them all.
However, I suspect one of the reasons I love them so much is the astonishing ability of this Anatidae to pair brilliantly with Pinot Noir, indeed the two seem made for each other, a synergistic culinary symphony like no other. One is Giazotto to the other’s Albinoni; they complete each other like few pairings can hope to achieve. Part sorcery and part sauciery, (sic) the combination can elevate a degustation from a pasticcio, an intermezzo, to an opera-eroica, an azione-sacra, an unforgettable gastronomic masterpiece.
Pinot Noir, that most seductive and alluring of grapes, that siren of the dark arts, the enchantress in black. As Andre Tchelistcheff, Chief Winemaker at Beaulieu, (from 1938 – 1973) said, “God made Cabernet Sauvignon, whereas the devil made Pinot Noir.”
The full spectrum of Duck dishes, flavours and textures can run from succulent and juicy, rich and fatty, to lean and gamey, to crispy, and sometimes even slightly dry. A paired wine needs to match the duck dish in weight, not too heavy to blow it off the plate, but with enough depth and richness to meet it in the middle.
Given the fatty components of duck, the wine needs good acidity, texturally this is to cut through the fattiness or oiliness and freshen up the palate, it also needs to have juicy, ripe berry flavours go with the gamey characters and the sometime dry notes of the duck. Given these rather exacting demands for a suitable pairing, Pinot Noir is the perfect wine, with its riper fruit notes of cherry, plum and strawberry, its more subtle forest-floor notes of wood, spice, mushroom, and autumn leaves, through to its lighter-to-medium, body and its textural components of low impact, super-fine tannins and its impeccable vitality and acidity.
The perfect pairing is when a dish and a wine combine to bring out the very best in each other and as a result, elevate the dining experience. The marriage of duck and Pinot Noir achieve this in spades, transforming into something akin to fine art for the palate, magic in the glass and a divine enchantment on the plate. When it all comes together, it’s what you live for.
I can think of no greater joy in the art of aristology, than the pairing of this bird with this grape; to dance and swirl and perform across a crowded table in six acts, captivating the audience and sating their appetite for food, art and culinary adventure.
“I live in eternal hope that when I finally ascend to that great restaurant at the top of the universe, the waiter will smile, wink -and without even bothering to take my order- pop out to the kitchen and call for a dish of red curried duck; whilst over my shoulder, the sommelier is already decanting a brilliant Pinot Noir from an excellent vintage.”
Darren Gall
A Glass of Noir
Sweetness and silk on the tongue,
Cherry kisses,
Falling to the floor of the forest,
Sweet, sweaty scents of sexual arousal.
Poetry, fanning out along neural pathways,
Little eddies of complexity swirling around synapses,
Coaxing, seducing, whispering lurid promises,
Plucking emotions, stirring feelings, clouding thoughts…
One cannot quite decode the siren’s song, leaning in …..
…ever closer.
A veil removed….…more suggestive…almost brazen,
The moist lips part……then recede just a little,
Is this all-shimmering illusion, drawing, ever drawing you further,
Into the heart of darkness…
…the sweet, black darkness.
Darren Gall
“Maya, Indian goddess of illusions, siren of shipwrecked sailors; if only you lactated Pinot Noir, you’d be perfect.”
-Miles to Maya in the movie ‘Sideways.’
…If any grape would be at home in the pose of the femme fatale – smoke-curling from its lips, long, irresistible legs crossed as another winemaker is sent to his doom – it would be Pinot Noir.
– Eric Asimov, New York Times
Pinot Noir is a minx of a wine. It leads us on a terrible dance, tantalizing with an occasional glimpse of riches in store for those who persevere, yet obstinately refusing to be tamed.
– Jancis Robinson
At their best, Pinot Noir is the most romantic of wines, with so voluptuous a perfume, so sweet an edge, and so powerful a punch, that like falling in love, they make the blood run hot and the soul wax embarrassingly poetic.
– Joel Fleischman for Vanity Fair
Its flavours are sensuous, often erotic, above rational discourse and beyond powers of measured criticism.
– Oz Clarke
Pinot Noir is a righteous grape, chock full of incredible texture and hedonistic pleasures; it is sex in a glass, so seductive that it is hard to say no to.
– Master Sommelier Madeline Triffon
Pinot Noir, more than anything, should tell the truth. And it does that very well. But you have to take a risk in order to hear the truth and then you might not always hear what you expect.
– Scott Wright, founder of Oregon’s Scott Paul Winery
Pinot Noir is the most challenging grape. It’s like dealing with…I don’t want to sound sexist, but, you know what I mean…It does the opposite of everything you think it’s going to do. It’s got its own mind. For that Pinot’s the ultimate challenge. But it’s also the ultimate nirvana.
– Randy Ullom, Kendall Jackson
Oh, its flavours, they’re just the most haunting and brilliant and thrilling and subtle and…ancient on the planet.
– Miles in the movie Sideways, October 2004
Great wines don’t make statements, they pose questions. To end with an exclamation mark is easy; when a question mark, is perhaps not more difficult, but far more interesting.
– Hugh Johnson
One small, private sitting:
Five incredible duck courses prepared by the exceptional Guy Baldwin
Six remarkable Pinot wines from some of its most famous terroirs selected by Darren Gall; and more than a few surprises throughout the evening provided by Frank Baroudi
6:30 pm, 1st February 2025
Baldwin’s Wine Loft (above Balwin’s) Street 240
THIS EVENT IS NOW SOLD OUT – A FULL HOUSE
