We sat down to dinner...a bowl of roasted sweet potato/parsnip soup and a three bean salad on a bed of "rocket" (also known to the rest of us as arugula). Simple enough. Then came the wine pairing. There were four beautiful glasses placed before us: one for white, one for red, a water glass, and a small crystal dessert wine glass. The table couldn't have been anymore beautiful and intimate. We started with the bean salad and a white and learned that the acidity of the dressing on the salad and the acidity of the wine offset each other just enough to create a nice smooth finish.
Then came a warm, creamy, caramel sweet potato soup that paired perfectly with a red pinot noir from Cotes de Rhone Mark Parsons chose. So gentle were the flavors when mixed together, like no other wine I had ever sipped. Following the main course, naturally, there was cheese. A fresh Gouda made at the monastery on the hill and a five year aged Gouda
were paired with a very sweet wine from a small South African distiller. . . and get this. . . only seven hundred bottles made by a friend of his.
It doesn't end here. After a deep comfortable slumber, we woke to coffee brewing from the French Laundry, juice, and home made Belgian waffles with real maple syrup. It was truly difficult to tear myself away from Mark's home. The hospitality that was extended to us is impossible to put into words and I am forever grateful for his knowledge, wisdom, class, humor, and love. A million times ... thank
you M.P.
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