December 11, 2025
What a busy day! Marigold did a classic French Dinner with Cassoulet and we had an amazing sunset! Bill had wine flight “A” and Martin did wine flight “B”. Unfortunately, that got busy, so Martin missed most of the wine shots. We’ll be just using descriptions from the vintners wine sites and transcribed audio from our server.
This is what we saw on the way to Marigold.
The map on the left is where the vintners for tonight’s wines are located. The numbers only go to 7 because the bruno duchêne `la luná rouge appeard in both flights. The numbers on the map correspond to Flight A 1-4 top to bottom, Flight B 1, 5, 6, 7 from top to bottom. Bill really liked the first of his A flight, as you can see from the arrows he marked his menu with. Martin liked all of his. We liked the bruno duchêne `la luná rouge so much that we bought a couple of bottles.
Here’s the transcript of the server’s intro:
Flight A is fuller, richer, higher concentration sort of on these wines. So some bigger, heavier, richer sort of flavors where the Flight B tends to be a little bit more delicate. I know a lot of times maybe it's just one of each flight per table, just so you can try both options.
We started with every type of olive we’ve ever heard of and some that we hadn’t. We forgot to ask the server about them ☹️ The big green on is a castelvetrano, we think, while the smallest ones are Niçoise. This might help - https://www.seriouseats.com/guide-to-olive-varieties
The salt cod croquettes. The smoked cod and amazingly thick, crispy “shell” really worked. Bill thought they were like a cod arancini.
Roasted champignons with sauce verde. Our server noted that in France this would have been escargo. Well, Coloradans aren’t quite as fond of snails as the French are, so these mushrooms are prepared as if they were escargo, with the traditional sauce verte.
Wow! This was neat, a very light bit of garlic and the intense green herbs really let the mushrooms show through.
The star of the dinner! A classic cassoulet, no bread crumb topping, just like the Serious Eats Cassoulet we did. The sausage was amazing and so perfect for the dish that we suspect it was made in house. The duck leg was perfect and falling apart tender. All in all, a really good imagining of cassoulet!
The cassoulet was accompied Dijon mustard, top left, baby hearts of romain, center, and cornichons at the bottom. Martin loves cornichons and their bright tang was just right.
Lightly poached pears with some Jasper Hill Farm’s Bayley Hazen Blue Cheese and saffron.
Martin was really surprised at how well the cheese and pear pairing worked. A really good finish to a special dinner.