Chicken, Mushroom and Garlic Sauté – Red or White Wine?

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Cotes du Rhone Blanc: Andre Brunel La Becassonne 2015 – Pairing Rating 9.5 out of 10.0

Cru Beaujolais: Jean Foillard Fleurie 2015 – Pairing Rating 9.5

As a duo, chicken and mushrooms have history.  The French gave us Coq au Vin.  English families living in Sicily blessed us with Chicken Marsala, and the Cantonese stirred us with Moo Goo Gai Pan, where Moo Goo means mushrooms and Gai means chicken.  Why mushrooms?  In the words of noted author and food scientist Harold McGee, “mushrooms . . . are prized for their rich, almost meaty flavor, due to a high content of free amino acids . . . making them a natural source of monosodium glutamate, the source of the taste sensation umami.”

If mushrooms, especially wild mushrooms, amp up the flavor of sautéed chicken, then roasted garlic takes the duo to another level.  Trios are always better than duos.  Consider:  Crosby, Stills and Nash; Moe, Larry and Curly; and Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin.  Well, maybe that last one wasn’t the best trio for the Poles.

Think of this as upscale comfort food.  The moist chicken and mushrooms are the headliners, but the roasted garlic, coupled with red wine/stock sauce and aromatic tarragon, carry the show.  This is one of our favorite chicken dishes and stands proudly with those mentioned above.

The recipe below is adapted from Marcia Keisel’s recipe for Food & Wine.  Don’t be put off by the number of ingredients; that’s how the dish achieves flavor-complexity.  The key is to have all the ingredients in place beforehand, as the execution of the sauté takes about 15 minutes.

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With regard to a wine pairing, the dish is amenable to red or white, but with these caveats:  no bold tannins if red, and not too acidic if white.  The tomatoes play a very minor role; and unlike a tomato-dominant red sauce, we didn’t need an acidic wine to stand up to them.   Tannic reds pair well with bold, fatty foods (think grilled Ribeye).  This dish is relatively low in fat, with mellow, earthy flavors, and calls for restraint when choosing a red.

Those considerations essentially rule out New World red blockbusters, Bordeaux, Sauvignon Blanc and most White Burgundies.  Trust us on this, we tried many of them with this dish.  Ultimately, we found two great alternatives in the southern reaches of France.

Partial to the food-friendly, white wines of the Southern Rhone Valley, we chose a Côtes du Rhone Blanc from Andre Brunel La Becassonne ($19 for the 2017 vintage):

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La Bécassonne is an entry-level wine from the Chateauneuf du Pape Domaine called Les Cailloux.  Like nearly all Rhone wines, La Bécassonne is a blend; in this case, a blend of Roussanne (50%), Grenache Blanc (30%), Clairette (20%), all from 40-year-old vines, on average.  The wine sees no oak barrels. Rather, it is aged for 6 months in concrete vats, thereby preserving its floral character and smooth yet refreshing mouthfeel. It is important to note that Côtes du Rhône producers have wide discretion on what grapes can be included in their blends. In this case, the dominant grape is Roussanne, which gives elegant notes of honeysuckle, apricot and white peach.  

For those who wish to dig deeper into the complexity of Roussanne-dominant blends, we suggest you seek out Tablas Creek Esprit de Tablas Blanc from Paso Robles, CA, (about $45 for the 2017 vintage, available only from the winery).  Chateau Beaucastel in the Southern Rhone offers a Roussanne-dominant blend in their Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc ($92 for the 2017 vintage).  Both are excellent examples of food friendly Roussanne combined with other Southern Rhone white grapes.

The hunt to discover the best red wine for this dish also took us down a few paths in Italy. We checked out the Vino Nobile (Sangiovese) from Avignonesi and found it to be too acidic for the dish.  The Montepulciano d’Abruzzo from Nicodemi had the right weight but the fruit was too bold for the subtle flavors of the sauté.  We came closer to the mark with a Côtes du Rhone Rouge, where the Grenache gave us a soft mouthfeel, but felt that lightness and freshness were lacking.  Heading north from the Rhone Valley, we found our mate in Beaujolais – specifically, the appellation of Fleurie.

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Named after a Roman general, Floricum, Fleurie is one of the 10 Crus of Northern Beaujolais. The wine we chose was the Jean Foillard Fleurie 2015 ($50 for the 2017 vintage). Fleurie is considered to produce the most feminine expression of the Gamay grape, serving up floral and fruity aromas, with red fruits and peach on the palate. Jean Foillard organically farms his 20 to 70-year-old Gamay vines on the pink granite/sandstone slopes of Fleurie.  Selective hand-harvesting, a 3 to 4-week fermentation, and 6 to 9-month aging in used oak barrels complete the vinification. 

The Foillard Fleurie emanated aromas of violets, peonies and roses, while the bright cherry fruit on the palate was all about freshness and a silky mouthfeel.  This Cru Beaujolais hit all the right notes for the Sauté.

So there you have it:  two great wine pairing choices and one sumptuous Chicken Sauté. Why not open both wines with this dish?  After all, trios are almost always better than duos.