June 7, 2013 Dinner – Crab Salad stuffed Avocados

I had made a crab salad with imitation crab and shrimp on Thursday (See June 6, 2013 for resipe) and we decided to have a simple meal of a salad with an avocado stuffed with the crab salad.

We went to the garden and picked a basket full of greens and spun them and paid a bed of them on a plate and then two avocado halves on each plate and then filled the avocado halves with the crab salad.  Suzette said she wanted to drink a white wine with the dinner, so I fetched a bottle of Chateau d’ Epiré from the basement fridge.  We visited Chateau d’ Epiré last August.  We arrived just before the chateau owners were eating their lunch on the patio of the chateau. We were greeted by the father of the wine maker, who told us his son would be available after lunch, so we sat in the church yard of the old Romanesque church (See picture) that sits on the edge of the Chateau’s property and ate our lunch also and then drove down to the Loire river and saw the bike trail that runs along the river.   After lunch we returned to the Chateau and the son came to the small church and invited us to taste their wine.  We loved it and bought two bottles of 2010 Cuvée Spéciale.

Here is a picture of the Chateau.  Chateau Epiré is the oldest property under the same ownership in wine cultivation in Savennières.   

 

Here is some info by the Chateau translated from French. For more information go to  http://www.chateau-epire.com

LE CHATEAU

 The Chateau Epiré is one of the oldest and most famous vineyards in the appellation of Savennières.  Since the seventeenth century, it has not been sold.
It consists of 11 hectares of which are planted with Chenin and 9 for the production of Savennières.

Here is picture of the vineyards with the Chateau and the new church behind them.

 Wines and Savennières Epiré

The chateau was built in 1850 on a former mansion.
As elsewhere in France the vine is located in Anjou from the Roman era.  But it is from the ninth century that the vines were grown Epiré more intensely.
During the period of the Plantagenets in the eleventh century, when the Anjou and the crown of England were tied, began exporting wines Savennières and Epiré to Britain.
It is probably for this reason that we find in the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge wine lovers of Savennières.

Needless to say the wine was lovely.  It had that special Savennières balance of complexity of tannins, fruit and chenin blanc crispness that results in a full bodied, yet light taste.

The wine appears to be available in the U.S. through Kermit Lynch. http://kermitlynch.com/our_wines/chateau-depire/ and in N.M. through Southern Wine and Spirits. 

What more can I say.  An ordinary, unexciting meal was made into a magnificent meal by a great wine.

Bon Appétit