10 year old Bonnes-Mares grand cru burgundy and confit duck

Rooting round the cellar (well, cupboard under the stairs) in France last week I stumbled across a bottle of 2003 Bonnes-Mares, a Grand Cru burgundy from Jean-Luc Aegerter I’d been sent as a sample about eight years ago and furtively stashed away until it was ready to drink.

The sensible thing would have been to put it to one side - it still had plenty of life in it but sometimes you just think ‘what the heck?’. We decided to crack it open.

I can’t claim the food we had - confit duck and hasselback potatoes - totally did it justice but it was fine. With great bottles like this you don’t necessarily want the food to eclipse the wine.

I might have cooked a roast duck, had I had time to find a good one locally which would have been less aggressively salty. A simply roast chicken, guineafowl or partridge would also have been a good match as would a roast rack of lamb or even a fillet steak. But no heavy extracted sauces.

And definitely not a pungent Epoisses - a pairing of which the French seem inordinately fond but which IMHO would have killed it stone dead.

And the wine? Bright, fine, delicate with a lovely waft of raspberries and redcurrants and a beautiful silky finish - pinot noir at its delectable best.

For more information about Bonnes-Mares, a 15ha vineyard which spans the communes of Chambolle-Musigny and Morey-Saint-Denis see Clive Coates' website here.

Duck with figs and Kooyong Ferrous Pinot Noir

I know duck and Pinot is a bit of a no-brainer but this was such a great dish and such a stellar wine that it's worth revisiting. (Coupled with the fact that some of you may be having duck for Christmas.)

It was at the restaurant at the Port Phillip Estate on the Mornington Peninsula where I spent a day and a half last week. (Not at the restaurant, I hasten to add - in the region). It has the most amazing views over the vineyards to the Bass Strait.

The dish was a nicely rare duck breast served with confit duck made into a crisp duck cake, poached figs and a spiced duck glaze obviously designed to complement the Kooyong Pinots.

The wine we were drinking was the 2010 Kooyong Ferrous Pinot Noir, one of a number of single vineyard bottlings, a superbly structured yet opulent, cherry-fruited pinot that was perfectly pitched for the dish.

Kooyong and Port Phillip were nominated combined wineries of the year in James Halliday's 2012 wine guide.

Unfortunately the Ferrous seems to be out of stock currently in its main stockist Great Western Wine. I'm not surprised.