January 2008 - lunch with Madame Faller et ses filles

Here's a piece of mine that appeared in the January issue of Decanter, on the wonderful wines (and food) of Madame Faller and her daughters Laurence and Cathy. I joined them recently at their beautiful walled property on the outskirts of Kaysersberg.  

 

THE FALLER FAMILY EN CUISINE

Trying to find a date when Madame Faller et ses filles can pause to prepare and enjoy a meal together at the Domaine Weinbach turns out to be a tall order.  While Madame Faller is most often to be found holding the fort at their beautiful walled property just outside Kaysersberg in Alsace, both her daughters notch up countless frequent-traveller miles each year promoting the Domaine’s wines. But sandwiched somewhere between Catherine’s return from Japan and Laurence’s imminent departure for Sweden, we manage to assemble the Faller team.

After lively discussion with input from all the family, we’ve settled on a menu of Alsace classics: a brilliant green parsley soup loaded with garlicky snails followed by coq au Riesling with ribbon noodles, both dishes designed to complement the fine white wines of the Domaine. ‘When you get a good match between the wines and the food’, observes Laurence, ‘each is enhanced.’ For pudding there’ll be a proper Alsatian tarte aux pommes, the kind customarily dusted with icing sugar and displayed on the kitchen dresser beneath rows of Kugelhopf moulds and Soufflenheim pottery dishes, ready for bidden (or unexpected) guests.

The Domaine Weinbach kitchen, wood-panelled and festooned with highly polished copper pots hanging from great old oak beams, is reminiscent of the one in the Musée Alsacien in Strasbourg – except that a real family lives, works, cooks and eats here. A venerably wonky white enamelled wood-fired stove crackles and roars away merrily in anticipation of today’s feast.

  

First we get the chicken underway. ‘It’s a great dish for showing off your best Riesling. For the sauce we’ll finish off a couple of the bottles we had out for a tasting yesterday. And to drink with it…’ – here Laurence pauses for a discussion with her mother as to which to fetch from the cave: a Grand Cru Schlossberg 2004, from the uppermost slopes of this famous, steeply banked vineyard, just visible from the kitchen window? Or a 2003 Cuvée Sainte Catherine from 60 year-old vines, this time from the middle slopes? Cathy is inclined to favour the 2004, a vintage that’s showing even more promise than the tropical 2003, when the classic aromas, elegant balance and good acidity that normally characterise the grape came under threat from the shimmering heat. In the end we decide to put both wines through their paces with the finished dish and see which works best.

A selection of Faller wines with tulip Riedel glasses,
waiting to be put through their paces

‘Ideally, they say you should put your best Riesling in the pot as well as on the table,’ continues Laurence. ‘We’re a bit spoiled with our leftovers – they’ll be perfect for the sauce. But even if you can’t run to a Grand Cru Schlossberg’, she adds with a smile, ‘it should be a drinkable wine – you can’t make a fine coq au Riesling with vinegar!’

We season the chicken pieces, brown them in sizzling oil and butter in a capacious black cast-iron casserole and set them aside.  Next the shallots are gently softened and the chicken pieces returned to the pan, followed by a good glug of Schlossberg and the finely sliced mushrooms. On goes the lid and we leave the pan to bubble away gently on a corner of the stove.

Next it’s the turn of the apple tart. Burnished Boskoop apples from the nearby La Pommeraie orchard are peeled, cored, finely sliced and fanned out decoratively in the pastry. Always start off the baking in a very hot oven, recommends Madame Faller, so the pastry gets thoroughly cooked through. Once this step is taken care of, the heat will be reduced and the creamy egg custard (which might separate into leathery-watery layers at too high a temperature) added for the final 15 minutes’ baking. Presently, sweet smells of spicy, buttery apples and pastry start sneaking out of the oven door.

Occasionally one of the Faller ladies disappears into the oak-panelled front room next door. The Domaine is open for tastings by appointment and there’s a steady trickle of visitors throughout the day. Today a member of the Confrérie de Saint Etienne, Alsace’s oldest wine brotherhood, arrives to collect some special bottles for the Confrérie’s celebrated cellar.

Our final task is to get busy on the soup. Cathy has commandeered armfuls of flat-leaf parsley and chervil from Kaysersberg’s Monday morning farmers’ market. Laurence has ordered snails from the Huss family’s ferme hélicole (snail farm) just up above Orbey in the foothills of the Vosges.

  

flat-leaf parsley and chervil for the soup

Snails are not only a speciality of Alsace, they also have a long and illustrious history at the Domaine. In pre-Revolutionary days, any self-respecting monastery or château had its own escargotière - a damp repository where the snails were fattened up. The escargotières at the Domaine Weinbach were especially celebrated, and provided a welcome source of income for the Capuchin friars whose monastery occupied the site in former times.

There follows a lively discussion about which wine will best accompany the soup. ‘A Muscat?’ muses Cathy, evoking its nervy fruitiness and slightly bitter finish, which should work well with the garlicky gasteropods. On the other hand, the Domaine’s delightfully aromatic yet dry Sylvaner – a world away from the sharp, thin wines that this workhorse grape generally produces - is sounded out as an alternative. Again we opt to try both, and focus on the soup.

A big pan of stock reaches a bubbling boil and huge handfuls of herbs are plunged in for several minutes – long enough to tenderise them but not so long that they lose their brilliant verdant colour. The pan is drawn aside and the contents blended smooth with a hand-held blender. In a separate pan the snails are tossed in butter with a promiscuous quantity of finely chopped garlic.  The last step will be to smooth and enrich the soup with a shot of cream.

We gather hungrily around the huge oak refectory table. The soup is ladled into bowls and topped with a handful of snails, Muscat is poured into one Riedel glass, Sylvaner into another. There’s a reflective silence, punctuated by gentle slurpings and contented sighs. The verdict on the first two wines? There’s general agreement that the Muscat picks up ‘le petit côté végétal’ of the snails in their herby broth – ‘that’s one of the reasons why it works so well with asparagus too’, observes Cathy.  On the other hand, the Sylvaner proves to be a surprisingly successful alternative, its ripe fruitiness quite a match for the green and garlicky soup. We offer token protest at the idea of second helpings, then capitulate gracefully – especially when Laurence recommends an alternative finishing touch: a splash of Muscat directly into the soup.

As the coq au Riesling comes to table we bend low over the fragrant golden pieces of chicken topped with piles of mushrooms and inhale the classic aromas of Alsace. As anticipated, of the two Rieslings tasted, the extraordinarily aromatic, multi-faceted 2004 Schlossberg has it over the smoother, more one-dimensional 2003.

Before we graduate to apple tart, a ripe Munster from Monsieur Dodin in Lapoutroie is slipped in, partnered with a spicy Altenbourg Gewurztraminer – here the fabulously rich 2003 rises to the occasion with this feisty local cheese. The final riposte is a Pinot Gris, a Selection de Grains Nobles 2002 from the Altenbourg vineyard again. Received wisdom about SGNs being inappropriate with any kind of food comes under attack as we sip gratefully at this precious nectar, interspersed with mouthfuls of golden apples in crisp buttery pastry.

In the space of one memorable meal with its richly assorted palette of flavours – herbs, garlic, snails, white meat in a creamy wine sauce, a powerful cheese, sweet-sharp apples - we’ve sampled a Muscat, a Sylvaner, two Rieslings, a Gewurztraminer and a Pinot Gris from various vintages and different degrees of ripeness. ‘The thing about our wines – and all the wines of Alsace’, concludes Laurence with understandable satisfaction, ‘is they’re so food-friendly – there’s one for every dish and every kind of cuisine.’

Add to that the fact that there are seven different cépages, a wide range of terroirs and hundreds of growers each making wine in their own unique style, and you have to wonder at those few deluded souls who claim not to care for ‘Alsace wine’.