Top pairings
Is Koshu the best match for Japanese food?
I suspect you’ll be hearing a lot about Koshu this year. No, it’s not some unfamiliar aspect of Japanese cuisine but a white wine made from a grape of the same name. A campaign to promote it in the UK was launched at a lunch in London yesterday by a VIP line-up of Japanese goverment officials from the Yamanashi prefecture where most of the winemakers are based.
So what’s it like? Well, I think it’s fair to say it wouldn’t stand out in a large consumer tasting. The wines - well, the unoaked ones at least - are fresh and clean with a fierce aciidity - not particularly to the current British - or American taste. For nearest comparison think Aligoté, Muscadet-sur-lie, bone dry Riesling. and young Chablis which the Japanese have always liked with food. The oak-aged examples are slightly fuller and rounder but nothing like as rich as a barrel-aged Chardonnay. Viura was the nearest comparison that came to mind.
Apart from a couple of wines which I’ll mention later there weren’t any stand-out examples or perhaps it was simply a question of adjusting ones palate to a new wine style. But it was with Umu’s kaiseki menu*, with which we tasted them in flights of three, that their virtues really became apparent. The cooking at Umu, which has a Michelin star, is in the opinion of many, the best Japanese food in London. I’ve certainly not tasted better outside Kyoto and the chef Ichiro Kubota certainly excelled himself yesterday.
The meal started with the most spectacular array of Iwaizakana (above right) a special New Year selection of dishes which was as beautiful as it was delicious. - a riot of different colours and textural contrasts. With ten components in all, each intricate, each unfamiliar, it’s hard to recall let alone describe each element accurately, but it included a amazing dish of squid and sea cucumber, a prawn, a tiny poached mandarin and I think, stuffed kelp with herring and extraordinary black beans topped with poached carrot and gold leaf. (Each element had some relation to water whether it was the river, pond or ocean) No flavour was intrusive but it encompassed a complete range of tastes - salty, sour, sweet, bitter and umami. And the koshu was as good an accompaniment as you could have chosen, refreshing the palate between each bite and allowing you to appreciate each new texture.
It also worked well with the next course of sashimi, especially some unctuously creamy pieces of squid - though not quite so well with the tuna toro which would, we felt, have probably been better with sake.
The next course was a rich seafood dumpling in a delicate white miso soup. Here the lighter wines showed better with the slightly glutinous casing of the dumpling and the fuller more rounded style of the Marquis Koshu (a 2009 tank sample) harmonised with the miso, showed off the rich seafood flavours of the filling and picked up with the umami-rich scattering of bonito flakes.
The wines struggled a little with the next dish, a savoury-sweet dish of sea bream ( I think) with pickles which again I think a sake would have taken better in its stride. The most successful pairing was again one of the fuller styles, the oak-aged Yamato 2009. It also created what I thought was the only discordant note of the meal - the combination with an intensely fruity almost Sauvignon-like wine (the Katsunuma Jyozo, I think) which was ironically the one that would have probably have paired best with a Western menu.
The savoury courses finished conventionally with a bowl of soup and rice but, needless to say, no ordinary soup, no ordinary rice: a fine dashi broth with some fine slivers of white fish and some delicately spiced rice topped with a steamed egg yolk, a tricky dish which defeated most of the wines except the 2007 Suntory barrique. (Actually it wasn’t dissimilar in texture to eggs benedict which also goes well with oaked whites.)
The meal ended with a red bean curd dessert with dumplings which the organisers wisely did not attempt to match with any of the wines.
So, the overall verdict? A meal of this sublime quality underlines that texture is as important as taste with Japanese food and the Koshu wines certainly respected that. Their crisp acidity worked particularly well with the raw and pickled dishes though there were some individual preparations I thought would have been better with sake - or vintage Champagne which I’ve found in the past goes really well with high-end Japanese cooking. The fuller-bodied, oaked Koshus came into their own with the richer dishes.
But there’s also an interesting cultural aspect at work here. I think a lot of people are going to be intrigued at the opportunity to drink Japanese wine in a Japanese restaurant and the fact that so many of the wines are modest in alcohol gives them an extra edge in these health-conscious times. (They would also go with lighter Western dishes). If the prices are reasonable I’m pretty sure they’ll take off.
* Kaiseke is the Japanese version of haute cuisine.
For more information about the wines check out the Koshu of Japan (KOJ) website
For Umu’s address, telephone number and menus visit their website (Prices for this level of cooking are actually very reasonable by Japanese standards)
For a good explanation of how kaiseki meals are structured read this piece on The Atlantic website
I attended the Umu lunch as a guest of Koshu of Japan.
Photo by Vinicius Benedit
What food to pair with Vin Santo?
No visit to Tuscany is complete without a glass of Vin Santo or ‘holy wine’, a (usually) sweet wine that is served at the end of the meal, almost always with hard little ‘cantucci’ biscuits.
It’s left undisturbed for several years in small barrels which gives it a slight ‘rancio’ (oxidised) character which sounds unpleasant but actually gives the wine balance and ‘bite’, preventing it from being over-sickly.
It struck me as I was sipping it that it would be a good partner for many other foods, though when I ventured this to my Italian hosts, the LoFranco family of Fattoria la Vialla they looked at me as if I was mad. But if you have a bottle in the house why on earth not experiment?
I would say Vin Santo resembles more in style fortified wines such as sherry, tawny port and particularly Madeira than other dessert wines so try the following matches:
- Blue cheese (especially Gorgonzola)
- High quality dark chocolate bars
- Nut-based tarts such as walnut tart and pecan pie - and Italian-style chestnut cake
- Tiramisu
- Panforte and other dense cakes made with dried fruit
- Mince pies
- Rich pâtés such as duck liver pâté - and seared foie gras if you eat foie gras (which I don’t).
Image © YRABOTA at shutterstock.com
What to drink with Scandinavian food
If culture and ‘terroir’ are a basis for deciding which drinks bestmatch a particular cuisine then beer must have a strong claim to bepaired with Scandinavian food.
Certainly London’s newest Scandi restaurant Madsen believes so offering a matching beer with every course for their recent menu for the London Restaurant Festival.
It was a nice idea that didn’t quite come off because of the quantities of beer involved. I ordered an Aer India Pale Ale from Denmark which was fine with my main course of ‘Hakkebøf med bløde løg’ (aka Danish beef burger with beetroot) but much less good with my ‘curry-marinated herring with green apples’ and a delicious smoked salmon dip, both of would have been better with a light lager or pilsner. Ideally you’d be able to order 250ml (or smaller) glasses so that you could match each course. 500ml is a lot of beer to drink for lunch (for girls at least ;-)
The food though was lovely - a modern take on smørrebrød with slightly larger helpings than you would get in Denmark but smaller than a standard main course - perfect for lunch. I also got to taste (though didn’t order) a fantastic baked crème caramel made with Svaneke ‘Choko’ Chocolate Stout so they’re obviously playing around with the idea of beer in food too.
There are other drink options, obviously, with this style of food though beer almost always scores better than wine with anything pickled in my opinion. A pan-fried fillet of Irish plaice with steamed broccoli tossed in oyster remoulade I also tasted would have been excellent with a minerally Sauvignon Blanc and my beefburger would have gone well with a Bordeaux or any similar Cabernet Merlot blend.
I like Madsen. It has a friendly, café-style design and atmosphere (very Scandi) and offers something genuinely distinctive to the London dining scene. They’re apparently thinking of putting on beer dinners so keep an eye on their website and on Twitter where they tweet as MadsenLondon.
Madsen is at 20 Old Brompton Road, London SW7 3DL. Tel 020 7225 2772.
I ate at Madsen as a guest of the restaurant.
Photo by Nextvoyage
Dry wines with fresh fruit
One of the welcome reminders of this long hot summer (in the Languedoc at least) is just how well dry wines go with fresh fruit. I’ve been happily drinking whites, ross and even reds with fruit such as peaches, apricots, melons and figs. Sweet wines, of course, go well with all of these but sometimes sweet wines seem too intense, particularly if, like me, you don’t have a very sweet tooth.
The ideal wines to pair with fruit are young unoaked - or subtly oaked - and fruity themselves. I particularly like rosé with peaches and melon, slightly aromatic wines like Viognier with both peaches and apricots and fruity lightly chilled reds such as Cinsault with strawberries, peaches and fresh figs. Riesling works well too: For reasons too complicated to go into we happened to have a bottle of Australian Tingletip Riesling to hand which went particularly well with some grapes.
I’ve also noticed how much more frequently the French offer fresh fruit for dessert than we do. Obviously they have better quality, riper fruit but also a taste - in simple restaurants at least - for less rich puddings. On our way down through France we were offered fresh peaches in verveine (lemon verbena) syrup, peaches and mint granita and fresh pineapple with basil. Any accompanying herb or some young goats' cheese will make it more likely that a dry wine will match but if the dessert includes a sweet accompaniment such as ice cream or a parfait or semi-freddo you’re more likely to need to reach for a sweeter wine.
Image by Jordan Feeg at shutterstock.com
Pairing beer with dessert
If you were going to introduce someone to beer the last course you’d probably think of would be a dessert but as I discovered at a beer and pudding matching session at Brown’s Hotel in London it can be a surprisingly successful combination.
The problem is that when it works it’s sublime and when it doesn’t hit the spot it can be downright weird. Added to which not everyone agrees which the pairings work best . . . Here are my own impressions with the following ratings:
***** Sublime. An all-time-great pairing
**** Very good - the drink enhances the food and vice versa
*** A sound reliable match (generally)
** Fine but no fireworks
* A feasible match but one which may diminish the wine or the food
No stars A misfiring match
Lime and mango Eton Mess with Sol lager
You could see the thinking behind this pairing. You drink lime with Sol, lime goes with mango ergo Sol goes with mango but it didn’t quite work like that. For a start the Sol was served (oddly) in a red wine glass without its lime. And the Eton Mess - with alphonso mangoes I would guess was exceptionally rich and sweet. I asked to try it with the Sol served the traditional way in a bottle with a wedge of lime stuck in the neck and it was much better but you wouldn’t really want to serve it that way at home with a posh dessert, would you?
Rating *
Steamed orange pudding with Blue Moonwheat beer
This by contrast was a surprise hit. Blue Moon is an American wheat beer brewed in the Belgian style with a big hit of orange which actually complemented the orange in the light, airy steamed orange pudding perfectly. Lovely
Rating ****
Poached pear in white wine and Grolsch Weizen
Again you could see where this pairing was coming from. The Grolsch which is more in the style of a German weiss bier has quite a strong banana-y note which was actually quite in tune with the delicate vanilla flavour of the poached pear but it was slightly too sweet for the beer. Also you wouldn’t serve a dessert unadorned like that and when we added cream the beer immediately tasted bittr. An odd one.
Rating **
Spotted Dick with custard and Aventinus
It was worth attending the tasting just to experience this combination which everyone agreed was the best pairing. Why? Well this traditional English fruited pudding brought out a whole raft of spicy raisiny flavours in the beer which in turn gave an extra dimension to the dessert - almost like a sticky raisin sauce. Totally unexpected and totally brilliant!
Rating *****
Raspberry crème brulée with Innis & Gunn oak-aged beer, Bacchus Frambozen beer and Hix Oyster ale
These were the combinations that caused the most discussion and disagreement. Personally I thought the dessert too light and too sweet for both the richly malted Innis & Gunn and for the Oyster Ale, de-naturing them and making them taste excessively bitter but the majority preferred them to the Frambozen (raspberry beer which was also very sweet. I’ve tried berry-flavoured beers with creamy desserts before and they’ve worked (especially cheesecake) so I think it’s just a question of tweaking the level of sweetness in the dessert (panna cotta might have been better than crème brulée with its caramelised topping) and adding some fresh raspberries rather than cooked ones. (Innis & Gunn is a much better cheese beer IMO and porter a better match with chocolate.
Rating: Innis & Gunn and Hix Oyster Ale * Bacchus Frambozen ***
Ginger parkin and Worthington’s White Shield
Actually porter might have come into its own here too. Worthington’s White Shield, a very dry hoppy ale, certainly didn’t work for me. The very sweet dessert stripped it of all of its flavour. Again it would have been much, much happier - and hoppier - with cheese
Rating: no stars
Pannacotta with caramelised oranges with Goose Island IPA
If you taste it on its own, Goose Island is big, rich, sweet and generous. You wouldn’t have known it with this dessert. The orange really blew all those flavours away making it taste one-dimensional and bitter.
Rating: no stars
Verdict
A fascinating tasting that hinted at a number of interesting possibilities. Yes, several pairings misfired but if other beers and desserts had been chosen (odd that there was no chocolate dessert and no barley wine, for instance and no desserts with a spicy element which I think would have helped the matches) I think the hit rate would have significantly increased. Certainly, on the basis of this tasting, beer is a better match for steamed English puddings than wine is.
Photo by Valeria Boltneva
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