Recommendations
Partridge and grapes with Quinta Nova Vintage 2002
On the plate are the legs and fillets of two partridges, with a sauce of reduced white wine and stock into which halved white grapes and toasted flaked almonds have gone. Set against it, the port is a 2002 vintage, whose tannin is absorbed by the meat.
From the shelf
The bottle
Quinta Nova de Nossa Senhora do Carmo is a wine house with its own quinta in the Douro. This is a vintage from 2002: port from the grapes of a single year, according to the label aged for two years in oak casks and stainless steel tanks before it went into bottle. The house describes its vintages as wines that must have concentration, structure and firmness. The bottle is 20 percent ABV and comes in 75 centilitres. According to the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto, a vintage is bottled two to three years after the harvest and then matures in the bottle.
The combination
Why this works together
Partridge is small, lean game with meat that is darker and firmer than that of farmyard poultry. It contains little fat but a lot of protein, and that protein catches part of the tannin on the tongue: tannin clumps together with proline-rich salivary proteins, so that the saliva no longer lubricates and the mouth feels dry, as Zanchi and colleagues have described. Without that protein, a 2002 vintage would come across bare and austere. In addition, this plate revolves around the sauce: reduced white wine and stock bring acidity, the halved grapes bring sweetness and the flaked almonds bring a roasted, nutty layer. The grapes in the sauce and the fruit in the glass are literally the same starting point, and the residual sugar of the port lifts the sauce instead of working against it.
At the table
The dish
- For 4 people
- Ready in 45 minutes
- Type main course
What you need
- 2 partridges, wishbone removed
- 60 ml unsalted butter, plus 10 ml for the sauce
- 30 ml sunflower oil
- 20 ml white wine vinegar
- 480 ml dry white wine
- 570 ml chicken stock
- a pinch of sugar
- 12 to 16 white seedless grapes, halved
- 60 ml flaked almonds, toasted
- salt and ground black pepper
How to make it
- Preheat the oven to 220 degrees. Heat the butter and the oil in an ovenproof frying pan until they foam.
- Lightly sprinkle the partridges with salt and pepper, place them on one leg in the pan and brown them briefly.
- Place the pan in the oven for 5 minutes.
- Turn the birds onto the other leg, baste them with the pan juices and put them back in the oven for 5 minutes.
- Turn them breast side down, baste again and cook for another 3 minutes.
- Place the partridges on a warm dish, cover them with foil and let them rest for 6 to 8 minutes.
- Carve them: first remove the legs and then the fillets from the carcass.
- Put the carcasses in a pan with the vinegar and the wine and boil it down until almost dry. Add the stock and the pinch of sugar and let it boil for 5 to 6 minutes until the sauce is syrupy.
- Stir in the 10 ml butter and strain the sauce. Stir in the grapes and the flaked almonds, season with salt and pepper and spoon the sauce over the meat.
In the glass
Serving
Serve this vintage at 12 to 16 degrees. Stand the bottle upright for a day and decant it gently into a carafe when you see sediment; after well over twenty years in the bottle that is almost certain. Use a tulip-shaped glass and fill it no more than a third. According to the institute, an opened bottle of vintage keeps for one to two days.
Everything about Quinta Nova Vintage 2002Back to Recommendations from ’t Bockje
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