What to eat with these wines?

[Chufi]

I´m planning a dinner party where we will drink these wines:

Pineau de Carentes for aperitif, I´d like to serve something small with that

Chateau Carbonnieux Pessac Léognan 2000

Chateau Lynch Bages Pauillac 1993

Recioto della Valpolicella.

Right now I´m thinking something with wild salmon for the white (what kind of sauce? creamy, which herbs?) and a rich oxtail daube for the red.

I know Recioto is often paired with chocolate but I´d prefer something else.. if possible.

Thanks, all help greatly appreciated. I´m looking for the best meal to serve with these wines.

[hjshorter]

I just drank a bottle of the '89 Lynch-Bages with two courses of a tasting menu: a grilled tuna with tendon, mushrooms, and consomme and a simple grass-fed grilled beef porterhouse with a little bearnaise. It matched well with both. I can't speak to the '93, but a daube might have stepped all over the herbal notes in the '89.

Edited July 4, 2008 by hjshorter (log)

[Brad Ballinger]

Pineau de Charentes is really more of a cognac. Serve nuts.

The salmon would be fine with the Carbonnieux. No cream sauce, though.

Oxtail would be fine with the Lynch-Bages. The wine, however, isn't going to be as structured/complex as other vintages, but should do okay.

With the recioto serve parmesan-reggiano and similar hard, aged cheeses.

[Chufi]

completely forgot to report back, sorry.

we had gruyere biscuits (home made) with the Pineau. A salad of borlotti beans and cubes of deepfried tuna with the white wine, and entrecote ( steak), potato mushroom gratin, and braised fennel with the red.

With the Recioto, blueberry madeleines and chocolate macarons.

it was a great dinner.