Some wines are made for the first cold evening of the year. Tonight is about those: wines for game, wild mushrooms, and a pot that's been on the stove since lunch.
We start with a white that drinks like autumn — Château Lusseau's barrel-fermented Graves, toasty and round. Then the heart of the evening: Pinot Noir three ways. A still red from Champagne, which almost nobody outside the region has tasted. An Alsace Pinot from the foot of the Vosges. And a Burgundy, from the hills I grew up in. Same grape, three northern climates — you'll taste the difference before I explain it.
Then we head south. A Bordeaux red from Fabien at Domaine Mélandi, who spent over ten years at Yquem and now farms 2.5 hectares by hand, with sheep doing the weeding. We close in the southern Rhône with Châteauneuf-du-Pape: Grenache, garrigue, warmth — the glass you want next to a venison stew.
Game terrine and mushrooms on the table. Next Thursday, we go the other way: Beaujolais. Bring an appetite. These wines are hungry.