Food and wine
What wine with foie gras?
A sweet wine, not a red: one of the rare pairings where sugar is the right answer.
Fattened duck or goose liver, served cold in slices with toasted bread, usually as a starter and above all at Christmas. Extremely rich.
Why this pairing works
Foie gras is fatty and faintly sweet. A tannic red collides with it violently: one of the worst pairings there is. A sweet wine answers fat with sugar and richness with acidity.
Look for on the list
Sauternes
50–120 €The canonical pairing. Expensive, but often offered by the glass, which is plenty.
Jurançon moelleux
30–55 €From the South-West, sharper and far cheaper than Sauternes. Often the better real choice.
Champagne
55–110 €The dry option, if sugar puts you off: the bubbles cut the fat another way.
What to avoid : Tannic reds, without exception. It is the pairing most often got wrong in France.
The ranges are restaurant prices for a full bottle. By the glass, reckon on roughly a quarter. At a wine shop, divide by two or three.
What to say
« Un verre de liquoreux avec le foie gras, c'est possible ? »
pronounced : uhn vair duh lee-ko-ruh a-vek luh fwa GRA, say po-SEE-bluh
A glass of sweet wine with the foie gras: is that possible?
Yes, but on this list?
Knowing which style of wine you want still does not tell you which one to take from the thirty lines in front of you. Photograph the list: Cépage compares what is actually available, at your budget, and decides.
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