Margaret Rand reports from a dinner at L’Assiette Champenoise that matched the increasingly fashionable sweet local specialty, ratafia de Champagne, with a range of dishes.
To be honest, it was the food that worried me. One wouldn’t normally be concerned about the offerings at a three-Michelin-star establishment like Arnaud Lallement’s L’Asssiette Champenoise; but in my room at Lallement’s hotel over the restaurant was a half-size reproduction of Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. A depiction of starvation and cannibalism seemed an odd choice. It made me wonder.
The occasion was a dinner to demonstrate the versatility of ratafia with food. To unpack that sentence: Ratafia de Champagne gained appellation status in 2015 and is unfermented grape juice plus local grape spirit—it’s a mistelle, in other words. Think Pineau des Charentes. It’s sweet and usually around 18% ABV; it’s the sort of thing that you would normally consider an apéritif, or something to drink with dessert or cheese.
Tonight, however, it was going to try its hand at a great variety of dishes—from crab, to pigeon, via beetroot and brill. Half a dozen Champagne growers were putting their Champagnes into the ring along with their ratafias, because the other surprise—once you’ve got over the idea that ratafia might go with pigeon—is how many Champagne producers are already making ratafia commercially. Young producers are especially keen, it seems. Krug and Charles Heidsieck are mentioned as being among those likely to launch ratafias. In 2008, the producers say, ratafia was just a
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
