A touch of Wine Snobbery

It was Mother's Day, after all, and I really wanted to make something special for Rhonda, so you will forgive my indulgence in an opulent choice of wine pairing.
But reader, let me tell you, this wine was a perfect pairing like Streisand with Redford, or Tracey with Hepburn. Let me rewind a bit and give you the menu breakdown so you can appreciate what I am talking about.
I worked Sunday from 6am until 1pm and from there I would go home and offer to cook dinner for Rhonda at any time she would prefer. Normally, she is an early eater and it was quite possible that she would ask for Sunday dinner @ 4pm, but today she was willing to eat between 5 and 6pm. Now I had already purchased everything I would need on Thursday, so I relaxed until 3:30pm when I finally jumped into action in the kitchen.
I prepared a salad which I have dubbed "Salad Rhondalaise" a romaine based light salad of Feta, pecans, craisins, with a touch of mushroom and cherry tomato with a splash of Balsamic Vinaigrette. This sweet and nutty intro was followed by the main course: Pan-seared Pork medaillions with Dijon mustard cream sauce supported by Red skinned mashed potatoes and fresh steamed green beans and soft rolls.
Talk about a classic French country meal, I was actually excited making the cream sauce and testing it out with pieces of pork (and so was my son, David)
Now to the good stuff. I had thought this out a week before, believe it or not, and decided to go with the French theme I had kind of come upon with the menu. I really wanted a red Burgundy and one that would shine with this kind of meal. I selected Joseph Drouhin's Gevrey-Chambertin. That's just a fancy way of saying: "I selected a French Pinot Noir that retails for about $44.00".
With Burgundy wine you will either drink white, which is solely Chardonnay, or red, which is solely Pinot Noir. But with few exceptions, you will not see the words Chardonnay or Pinot Noir printed on the label; instead, you will find the name of the village in the Burgundy region from which the wine was grown. With these particular wines I had the pleasure of attending a wine luncheon with Laurent Drouhin from the Joseph Drouhin family (you see why I called this post wine snobbery?) During this lunch we opened with the LaForet red, their basic table version of Pinot Noir and then followed it up with Chorey-les-Beaune, a twenty-three dollar Pinot and finished a rack of lamb with the Gevrey-Chambertin.
So I knew which one would pair well with the pork and deliver the knock-out punch for Mother's Day.
The Gevrey-Chambertin starts out with a strong, wooden feel on the tongue and then finishes with bright vibrant, almost too intense fruit. All of this is going on in a wine that is still quite delicate and light to the mouth. This created a devastating attack upon the pork entree and made the meat come alive. Again, Rhonda rose to the occaision and sampled the red although I held a Chilean Chardonnay in reserve, but she agreed that the Pinot Noir was delicious and she enjoyed the red grape with her dinner.
Dinner was a success and I logged it on my computer as a menu to save for future use.
If anything, I felt very confident in making the correct wine choice for a special dinner and to be able to do that for the love of your life is something worth noting. I hope you all try to find the "perfect pair" of food and wine and enjoy what a complete dining experience is all about.