Home Again

Nice to be back home. Business trips are mostly work and little fun and this one was not that different.

We uncorked some champagne to celebrate. To be precise it was a 2002 A. Lancelot-Pienne Cuvee de la Table Ronde and there was a smoked salmon and apple appetizer to go with it.

The wine was fruity and yeasty on the nose and had a great set of bubbles going for it. The taste was sharp with some apples, citrus and a tiny hint of strawberry overlaying the yeasty component.

The salmon was a smoked Alaskan Coho salmon. that was topped with some thinly sliced Honey Crisp apples, a little lemon juice, a tiny bit of olive oil and a grind of black pepper. The champagne cut through the fattiness in the fish while the hint strawberry and bread in the wine was great with the apple. Nice combination and it took three of us very little time to polish off both the appetizer and the bottle of champagne.

Dinner was a small tri-tip roast done on the grilled and a little pasta with olive oil, pancetta and sage. With that we opened a 1995 Fattori di Felsina Chianti Classico Riserva. The wine was brick red with some browning at the edges. The nose was classic Chianti dirt and tart cherries. Due to it's age there was just a hint of leather sneaking into the wine, but this just added to the wine. More leather and I would have thought the wine was headed downhill. There was good acid and soft tannin in the wine and the cherries and a few herbs really poked out of the wine. Good stuff.