Today, we embark on a culinary adventure where we’ll be sharing recipes and tips from one of the world’s most respected and acclaimed Chefs, using simple, fresh ingredients and transforming them into sophisticated and elegant meals for the everyday home cook.
We, as a company, admire and love classic wines, and this collection of recipes is something of an homage to the classics – all presented by Jacques Pepin, a master French Chef. Since the late 1980s, he has appeared on American television and has written for The New York Times, Food & Wine and other publications.
As a chef, author, culinary educator, television personality, and artist, Pepin has brought techniques and methods required to achieve superior culinary results to the masses and has provided generations around the world with a window into the art of French cooking. We deeply admire this legacy and profound respect for culinary fundamentals and the timeless appeal of classic French dishes and cuisine.
Much like Pepin, we as one of Canada’s oldest established wine import companies, have staked our business and reputation on a deep and abiding respect and admiration for classic wines made the right way. While trendy new flavours, styles and regions have enjoyed brief moments of celebrity over the past 3 or 4 decades, we have never abandoned our preference for for selections that are certainly a little flashy, but that have stood the test of time.
Today we aim to marry these two independent but ideologically similar legacies with a collection of fabulous video recipes from Chef Pepin, alongside some equally delicious tips and suggestions for pairing wines with these splendid bits of inspired fare.
French Onion Soup:
Wine Match: Dry Alsace Pinot Gris
The voluptuous texture, aromatic lift, and mineral depth of classic Alsatian Pinot Gris offer pairing potential with this rich, meaty and indulgent soup. Delicate and refreshing flavours of ripe yellow peach, pear, apricot, candied citrus peel, melon rind, and orange blossoms cleanse the palate between spoonfuls, without overpowering the sweet and smoky balance of the soup.
Quiche Lorraine:
Wine Match: Sancerre
Do you like white wines with refreshing acidity? Check. What about offering a showcase of the soils, sites and climates they’re grown in? Check. There really is no such thing as ‘been-there-done-that’ Sancerre — every glass of well-made Sauvignon Blanc from Sancerre is a timeless expression of staggering varietal purity, stunning depth, mineral-loaded texture, and pulse-quickening tension. Who’s ready for some quiche?
Chicken Jardiniere:
Wine Match: Chablis
If you are a white Burgundy lover like me, you owe it to yourself to dedicate a bigger share of your drinking budget and cellar space to Chablis. Why? Well, for starters the relative value vs Cote d’Or legends is astounding. And really, there are only a select few regions in the world that I never truly tire of drinking, as with Chablis. On the nose you discover a cornucopia of brilliant refreshing aromas of lemon peel, lime leaf, grapefruit pith, ripe green apple, chalk, and lees. And at first sip the palate is struck by lightning – filled with the Chablisienne trademarks of precision, refreshment and utter joy.
Burgers:
Wine Match: Cotes du Rhone
Put simply, Cotes du Rhone is kind of like the wine lovers equivalent to the perfect burger. Much like a carnivore finds pleasure and satisfaction in that first bite, Cotes du Rhone touches those same places for the Wine-ivores among us. And as if this wasn’t good enough all on its own, Cotes du Rhone can be amongst the most mind blowing and energizing wine values made anywhere on the planet. Flamboyant and forceful, exploding with intense black raspberry, cherry, plum, black currant, licorice and pepper, the best reds of the Cotes du Rhone are silky smooth, plush and irresistibly delicious.
Wine Match: Bordeaux Red
There are a lot of good words to describe great red Bordeaux – dense, intoxicating aromas of black raspberry, black cherry, and spiced plum, tobacco leaf, anise, cigar wrapper, potting soil, pencil lead, crushed graphite, cacao, wet gravel, and cloves. Or we could just keep it simple and say that a well-made Left-Bank Bordeaux with this steak is simply swoon-worthy.