I can’t keep up with this weather, today it’s 60 degrees and last weekend might have been the coldest I’ve ever been in my 8 years in NYC!  On Friday night I had ambitions to finish up a leftover bottle of sub-par Pinot Noir and test out a classic Burgundian winter dish, Coq Au Vin, the epitome of cozy!  

While we used the sub-par Pinot for the cooking wine, we opened up this 2014 Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge from Domaine Bergeret Christian.  Chassagne-Montrachet is more classically know for Chardonnay, so it was interesting to try a red wine (made of Pinot Noir grapes) from the region.  Upon first opening, all I could smell and taste was alcohol.  We decanted twice before pouring back into the bottle and letting it breath a bit before trying again.  Once we sat down to dinner, the wine had completely changed.  Now instead of purely alcohol, the nose was full of bright red strawberry bandaids!  I say that in the best way as I’m a fan of Brettanomyces.  There was lots of acid but balanced fruit, it was light and bright, but it definitely had a certain “funk” to it, not bad, just different. 

Now for the Coq Au Vin, this is the first time that Ina let me down!  Her recipes are usually a home run but this one, not quite so.  We salvaged it and the overall flavors were really good, but cooking time took twice as long as stated.  If you want to give it a try yourself I’d make the following changes:  double the amount of bacon or use pancetta, use skin-on thighs vs. a whole chicken as the dark meat was significantly better than the white, make sure you brown the chicken very well otherwise you will get grayish-purple boiled chicken, double the mushrooms, and reduce the amount of liquid (wine + chicken stock) by at least half a cup, after the recommended cooking time it was extremely watery, we ended up boiling off and reducing for an additional 45 minutes to get a thicker sauce.   

Wine:  2013 Domaine Bergeret Christian Et Fille Chassagne-Montrachet Rouge

Price:  $35

Purchased:  Verve Wines