So last night we went to a friend’s apartment for a wonderfully home-cooked meal. The rain had soaked my spirits all day, so I decided it would be a good idea to do a little soaking in spirits of my own.
As we are decent houseguests, my wife and I never arrive to a dinner date empty-handed. In addition to a very nice gift she found for our friend, I brought along a bottle of Chandon Reserve Brut, part of our extensive-and-still-growing collection of Domaine Chandon bubbly. What was for dinner?
Acorn squash stuffed with chicken-apple sausage, spinach, and a wonderful little mixture of panko and cheese.
While I wasn’t 100% sure that Brut would go with sausage, I decided to give it a shot anyway. We were all pleasantly surprised.
The wine is dry, but not cloying. This isn’t Merlot-level holy crap I’m thirstier now dryness, but almost more lack of sweetness. Notes of apple and pear announce their presence with authority before giving way to a soft floral note—I’m still new enough at this that I couldn’t quite place it—and the wine finishes clean, as many dry wines do.
Now, had this been pork sausage, like Jimmy Dean breakfast links or something, then no, I wouldn’t recommend the Chandon Reserve Brut. But because it was chicken-apple sausage, it worked wonderfully. The autumnal qualities of the Brut fit very nicely with both the apple and garlic hints in the sausage, as well as the acorn squash’s wonderful meaty-earthy vibe.
I.e., some good shit.
The Reserve Brut is far from my favorite of Domaine Chandon’s bubblies—very far, in fact—but it is a surprisingly good wine in many ways, and it even helped prove that, yes, you can pair sparkling with sausage.