Match Wine to Course

I am doing a dinner later this month and have settled on food and wines, but am being a bit wishy washy about WHICH wines to mate with which course.

Thought it might be fun to toss it out here and see what people would think would work best.

One course consists of several sorts of woodland mushrooms in a Port and Madeira and veal sauce, over stacked potato gallettes and a slab of seared foie gras.

The other course is roast quail with herbes de Provence with juniper jus.

The wines we are going to be drinking consist of two pairs, one of 1989 Bordeaux, and one of 1996 Barolos.

I know which wines I am inclined to use with which course but would welcome your opinions.

Mushrooms go better with Barolo, although the foie gras is throwing me a little bit. Quail goes better with Bordeaux. So those would be my picks although I'd probably prefer a Burgundy with both courses. I also might consider reversing the courses, particularly if you pair the wines the way I suggested. It does sound like an awesome dinner. Enjoy it.

Gadzooks, both courses sound wonderful. How do I get some?

If you must drink those two wines, then it's Barolo with the earthy dish and Bordeaux with the herby birdie. But let me suggest that you consider a Rhone syrah for the mushroom/potato dish and then shift the Barolo over.

Also, I'm curious to know which 1996 baroli you plan to serve. That is a vintage to keep and keep so I'm wondering what could be even vaguely ready to drink?

Thanks guys. I agree pretty much with what has been said and would normally have the Barolos after the Bordeaux, but the Barolos naturally mate with the mushroom dish (don't worry about the seared foie gras - we tested this with just about every sort of red wine and they go beautifully together).

The more elaborate main course goes best with the Bordeaux.

The Barolos will be 1996 Brero regulare and a Marengo Brunate. The Brero I have had before and it is a modern forward wine that drinks well. I am putting this together from the wine contributions of 5 other people otherwise I'd have offered to open a 96 Brero Poderi Roset to compare with the regulare (that is often fun to do).

The Bordeaux are an all-Mouton owned pair, 1989 Clerc Milon and Armailhac, both of which are long in the tooth, but from cool cellars should stand up. In fact I've noted to myself that the 89 Armailhac was actually showing more concentration than the 1990 last time I compared them. Next time maybe we can try the 1990 pairing of those wines (we rotate dinner duty among the 5 of us).