Discuss Bourgueil and Thai food...
Aug. 17th, 2005 09:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lsanderson"Thai food is generally ceded to the beer camp. It's hard to beat a great pilsner with a spicy Thai curry, but you know what? A good Bourgueil comes awfully close. Bourgueil, a village in Touraine on the Loire, produces reds from the cabernet franc grape that can be raspy with acidity, but when the acidity is balanced by sufficient fruit you have a delicious wine. Are Bourgueils, along with similar wines from the neighboring villages of Chinon and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, great wines? No, but they are great food wines.
"If you don't believe me, have a meal at Holy Basil, a Thai restaurant in the East Village. Pimnapa Suntatkolkarn, the chef and an owner, has constructed a wine list that I wish could be a model for every moderately priced restaurant, and she always offers a good Loire red. At a meal there I tried a 2002 Bourgueil "Les Galichets" from Catherine and Pierre Breton, as well as a 1995 Rioja Reserva from López de Heredia. The Rioja is wonderful, and about twice the price of the Bourgueil, but with a pungent, tart yet balanced dish like crisp duck with panang curry and kaffir lime? The Rioja had no business on the table. The Bourgueil, though, was perfect - refreshing and stimulating. The Rioja no doubt would receive a higher score in a blind tasting, but at a Thai dinner, the Bourgueil blew it away." by Eric Asimov in today's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/dining/17pour.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print.
"If you don't believe me, have a meal at Holy Basil, a Thai restaurant in the East Village. Pimnapa Suntatkolkarn, the chef and an owner, has constructed a wine list that I wish could be a model for every moderately priced restaurant, and she always offers a good Loire red. At a meal there I tried a 2002 Bourgueil "Les Galichets" from Catherine and Pierre Breton, as well as a 1995 Rioja Reserva from López de Heredia. The Rioja is wonderful, and about twice the price of the Bourgueil, but with a pungent, tart yet balanced dish like crisp duck with panang curry and kaffir lime? The Rioja had no business on the table. The Bourgueil, though, was perfect - refreshing and stimulating. The Rioja no doubt would receive a higher score in a blind tasting, but at a Thai dinner, the Bourgueil blew it away." by Eric Asimov in today's NY Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/17/dining/17pour.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=print.
