Wine Pairing Story (3)

October and november . Mushroom season in the woods . This year was atypical on this regard , it's been so dry since last winter. When I first scouted the woods at the end of september somewhere in the Loire valley, I could not
find anything . the ground was desperately dry . Nothing . Not even in woods where I usually found plenty of them at this time of the year . Then comes october , and after a few rainstorms and lots of sun again , things went back to normal , with moisture on the ground , smell of rotting dead leaves, and mushrooms ... Mushrooms make a peculiar dish, not really vegetables , not really meat, and I have no clearly definite wine colour choice to go with them . Reds are favorite , but with B.'s advice, I sometimes opt for a white . We'll see what we choose this time .

The mushroom season comes with the hunting season in France . I often walk into woods along wich posts signs say : "Chasse à Gros Gibier - Tir à Balles", meaning deer- or wild boar hunting under way with high powered rifles . Doesn't really scare me . I'm more at risk riding my motorcycle in Paris than getting shot by a stray bullet in woods where hunting is in progress . It just adds some excitement and spice to my own (mushroom) hunting .
As a photographer, I can say the light at this particular season is terrific . Just walk randomly in the woods, away from the beaten paths,
trying not to be lost with keeping in mind the sun direction, and you will see the nature as if you were the first human being walking there . In autumn, the light is more horizontal and the underwoods get additional colours with many shades of yellow and red found in the falling leaves , and the unexpected colour range of discreet or bright mushrooms .
I fall upon many types of mushrooms ( I am quite sure some of them being magic mushrooms ) , but I narrow my pick on two types : Cepes ( Boletus ) and "Pieds de Moutons" in french . Armed with a cheap 100-yen japanese folding knife and a supermarket plastic bag, I walk through glades, flattening a few ferns with my boots so as they don't touch my pants : There is a down side in this paradise : the ticks, maybe due to the high number of wild animals around .
Zen and the Art of picking mushrooms... You have no idea how this sport can give lessons for the daily life . You park along a secondary road, walk straight into the woods : This is an act of faith . why did I choose this spot ? And while it may happen that you find your first boletus the very second you jumped the road ditch into the woods , sometimes you keep walking randomly under the trees for 20 minutes without any find . That's when you must keep your spirits high and focused and your eyes keen . Then comes unexpectedly a bunch of big ones in a single spot .

Sorry for my competitor here , but this one will be mine now . I should find a way to train slugs for this job, as they are always on the spot before me .
I'll delicately pull this one off my find, cut the boletus neatly at ground level and there will be one more in the bag . Usually, when I see a boletus I first look around before kneeling, and scan the immediate vicinity for additional ones, as they are rarely alone .This "Pied de Mouton" (I have to find its english name) grows later in the season . This is a great mushroom , with a very different texture than the boletus . While the boletus is, I would say, close to meat, with some viscosity added, the Pied de Mouton has a drier, slightly crunchy feel . Plus, it resists rotting and can wait for you quite long in the woods or in the fridge . I occasionally find chanterelles (girolles in french, quite rare where I go, though), parasol mushrooms (coulemelle in french) and lactarius (lactaires) which are considered as barely edible . And I probably come across many mushrooms which would make a nice dish, but I lack the knowledge about them . The Pied de Mouton is a mushroom that I think can pair with a white .The boletus, with its greasy texture and meat style asks for a red I think . I love when I stumble across one of these, not only because they illuminate the underwoods, but also because I know the good ones are not far away . Keep walking... This type is of course easy to spot, but the boletus, with its dead leaf colour, asks for a very good scanning "software" and decrypting abilities, which I think as a photographer I have . You need a trained eye, luck and some sort of endurance, walking and looking at the same time on the ground in all directions , both close and at a distance . This is a hunt where you keep an ear open for barking dogs , which mean hunters on their way...The wild Boletus or Cepes are fried in a pan with a little bit of garlic . The slices diminish in size after the water in the mushrooms evaporates , that's why you have not to be afraid to prepare a lot of mushrooms . When the colour of the things in the pan is something between brown and black, this is time to serve . I thought the dish deserved something like a "meat" wine, and as B. had several bottles from Chateau Belle-Vue, Haut-Medoc, millesime 2000, and wanted to see how the wine was going , we opted for this one . The wine has a dark colour and a spicy nose with some blackcurrant . The fleshy side of the wine, with its present-but-integrated tannins, met harmoniously the somehow greasy feel of the Boletus . By the way , the wine is interesting for its blend : 12% Petit Verdot, 34% Merlot, 54% Cabernet Sauvignon . The Petit Verdot brings body and colour to the wine .All pictures were shot this autumn 2005 in the Loire Valley

Comments

[Iris]

Des photos supèrbes - comme d'habitude - et tout ce que tu dis sur la lumière particulière dans les sous-bois à l'automne est vrai - nous avons eu une très bonne saison de champignons par ici aussi - avec toute cette eau, qui nous est tombé dessus depuis début septembre, cela console!

[David Harvey]

re Pieds de Mouton - we call them Pieds de Mouton as well, at least in the industry. Never saw a translation. Neither have I ever heard someone say 'penny bun' for porcini/cep/boletus either, so you're safe in French for now. Am greatly enjoying your site from London: kind of subtle, non-judgemental, yet 'naturally' selective. We like.

[Abe]

That would be a "Hedgehog mushroom"