Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s
and Brian’s wine and food blog. Mary and
I are taking a short trip to New England to soak up the color, literally, and
enjoy the culture, food, and wine. We’re
ensconced in the western Massachusetts village of Lee. The foliage is spectacular, although a bit
past peak, and the locals tell us the colors are not as vivid as usual. As Mary says, we don’t know what we’re
missing because we haven’t been here before and the countryside seems
impossibly beautiful to us. Just take a
look at the intensity of the color of this tree.
The Housatonic River flows through this area and powered many textile mills long ago. Here are a couple of photos of the river and the old mill at Lee.
I went for a jog and discovered Laurel Lake just north of
town. You can see some trees along the
shore are already bare, but the scenery remains beautiful.
We set out on an afternoon drive to see what there is to see. Here are some images from Lenox, just a few
minutes to the north.
This large shrub or small tree is common here, its leaves
fiery red in autumn. Can anybody tell us
what it is? Please comment! We’re very curious.
After stopping for lunch in Pittsfield at the Nook &
Cranny, a tiny little corner place open only for breakfast and lunch,
we crossed into Vermont, only a 45 minute drive from Lee. This beautiful hilltop is just across the
state line.
A pumpkin patch with hundreds of pumpkins, various squash varieties, and
local syrup and fruit was a nice roadside stop.
Red Radio Flyers were for children to use to pick their pumpkins for
Halloween and pull them back to the barn for purchase. 
This interesting dried corn is called strawberry corn.
Dalton, Mass, is another old mill town on the
Housatonic. Here you can see the old
mill, the dam on the river creating a mill pond and falls.
Back in Lee at the end of the day, this is the Lee
Congregational Church. It could use a
paint job, but it is a beautiful, imposing structure. The cornerstone gives us a glimpse of its
history.
Our short-term home away from home is the Chambery Inn, an old
schoolhouse built in 1885 and known as St. Mary’s School, saved from the
wrecking ball and relocated to its present location in 1989. It is now a bed and breakfast inn, owned by
Robert and Olga Healey. We have met Olga
and some of her staff, all delightful people.
Some of the guestrooms still have the original chalkboards and fixtures
from the school. The photos below also show a diploma from
1919 and one of the original school desks.
Breakfast to order arrives at our door at our requested time each
morning, including a generous thermos of Green Mountain coffee and the local
newspaper.
Mary sets it up on a small table in front of the gas logs
fireplace. We relax in the privacy of
our room, sip coffee, read the local news…wonderful!
Dinner Sunday evening was at Bistro Zinc in nearby
Lenox. It is a lovely setting in a
beautiful New England town. It has many
typical French bistro menu items … coq au vin, steak frites, pork roulade, and
grilled loin of rabbit. Mary had
cassoulet and I had boeuf bourguignon.
The appetizer course
for Mary was a salad of arugula, beets, and goat cheese. The goat cheese had an interesting golden
crust of Panko bread crumbs, which we’ve never seen. The salad dressing was an orange, fig, and
fennel vinaigrette. Here’s Mary to
describe the salad.
I loved loved loved this salad! I had never seen nor tasted
goat cheese prepared this way. I thought it was a crabcake at first. The crust
was crispy yet the creaminess of the cheese just melted in my mouth. The beets
contributed a sweetness to the salad which balanced perfectly with the
tanginess of the goat cheese and dressing.
My first course was a soup of pureed potato and leek in a
cream base. It was warm, rich, creamy
and delicious.
Mary’s main course was cassoulet with duck confit, pork
belly, and pork sausage with Peruvian lima beans. The dish arrived with the duck confit still
on the bone and a sprinkling of bread crumbs.
Here’s Mary again. The cassoulet
was excellent! The duck was tender,
pulled right off the bone, and had that slightly salty, rich flavor of long
cooking with herbs and spices. The pork
belly and sausage were also delicious, but there was just too much meat in
there for one person to finish, try as I might!
The beans were fine, but to be honest, I prefer regular white northerns
for cassoulet. Cassoulet is the perfect
dish for a chilly autumn night in the Berkshires and I enjoyed it very much.
Brian here again. The boeuf
bourguignon was fork tender, comprised of braised short ribs with roasted
carrots, onions, and mushrooms, served alongside goat cheese mashed
potatoes. I guess I’m spoiled to Mary’s
boeuf bourguignon. We’ve had the dish
several times in French restaurants here and in France, and Mary’s is better or
at least as good as any I’ve experienced.
Guests in our home who are experienced in French cuisine have said the
same. The Bistro Zinc expression was
good, but on the whole, unremarkable.
The wine list was a disappointment, much less than what was
indicated on the website. It was almost
all domestic, no Burgundy, no Rhones, only a few Bordeaux. With all due respect to the great wines of
California, Oregon, and Washington, which might pair just fine with the food, a
restaurant that claims to offer Bistro fare should offer French wines. Cassoulet cries out for wines of the
Languedoc or southwest France. Those
experienced with boeuf bourguignon would say a good red Burgundy, Rhone, or Bordeaux
would be best. French wines are more
likely to offer the balance and complexity to complement traditional French
cuisine. The list at this restaurant may
be a reflection of what they are able to sell to mostly American patrons, but I
would suggest at least a slightly expanded list with more options. And while I’m offering constructive feedback,
nicer stemware would be good, but to be fair, we have dined in French bistros
that use exactly this kind of wine glass.
From the available options, I selected a Bordeaux called
Mauvais Garçon, French for “bad boy.”
The winemaker, Jean-Luc Thunevin, describes himself as a “garagiste,” starting out making wine at
home in his house or garage. You can see
the wine has a playful label which includes an arrow pointing to the garage. This wine is a Merlot with a splash of
Cabernet Franc. The grapes are sourced
from throughout Bordeaux, so the label indicates only a general Bordeaux
appellation, not a specific area. Here
are my notes on the wine.
Mauvais Garçon
Bordeaux 2007. Definitely modern in
style with new oak providing a big hit of chocolate and vanilla, the wine
eventually opened to reveal a little Bordeaux character of currant and
cedar. On the whole, it was aromatic of
dark fruit, currant, dark cherry and plum without much varietal integrity at
first. On the palate, it was fleshy, full-bodied
with low acidity but not unbalanced. The
palate was soft and easy without the edgy structure I like to see in good
Bordeaux. Plum, currant, dark berries,
and chocolate all highlighted the flavor profile. Reasonably balanced, moderately complex,
medium in length, not really my style but drinkable, and paired adequately with
dinner. 95% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Franc,
13.0% alcohol. As Miles said in Sideways, “quaffable but not
transcendent.” The restaurant price was
$46.
The other disappointment on the menu was an absence of a
cheese course. This may be even a bigger
oversight than the wine list. Even if
they can’t sell a great deal of French wine, I expect a nicely selected cheese
course would do well in a bistro-style restaurant. Plus, western Massachusetts and Vermont are
well known for delicious, artisanal cheeses.
They had a variety of other dessert options, including a
delightful-looking profiterole that was enjoyed by table parties on our left
and right, but Mary didn’t want to partake unless I had some kind of dessert,
too, so we opted out of dessert.
Instead, we just sipped on the remainder of our wine, enjoying each
other, discussing the events and beauty of the day, and the ambience of the
location and the restaurant. All in all
and even with the minor critical observations, it was a delightful end to a
delightful day.
That’s our post for today.
We’ll have one more report from the Berkshires in a few days when I have
time to get another post up on the blog.
In the meantime, here’s another picture of my wonderful wife at Bistro
Zinc. Life is good. Keep checking back for more wine, food, and
cultural adventures here at Cépage et Cuisine.
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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