Cornish Blue and South African Muscat

After last week's Muscat pairing my match of the week oddly involves Muscat again, this time a sweet Muscat Petits Grains from South Africa with the romantic name of Heaven-on-Earth. The grapes are apparently dried on a bed of straw and rooibos tea, a flavour I couldn't really pick up in the wine but it was very attractive nonetheless with an lovely quince and apricot flavour.

I partnered it with the award-winning Cornish Blue at a wine and cheese pairing I ran at the Cheese and Wine Festival in London at the weekend and it went really well. That isn't always the case with light dessert wines and blues (the Heaven-on-Earth is only 11%) but Cornish Blue is quite a mild cheese. (To be honest I'm surprised it won the title of World Champion Cheese at the World Cheese Awards last year. It does however make it a good blue to have on a cheese board as it's less likely to clash if you're drinking a red as I suggested shortly after it picked up its award.)

It was supplied along with the other cheeses in the tasting by Paxton & Whitfield whose affineur Rhuaridh Buchanan shared the platform with me. The other pairings were a Sancerre and Ticklemore goats cheese, Rioja Crianza and Manchego and Touchstone Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon with Auld Lochnagar, a Scottish cheddar-style cheese about which I've written here.

All the wines were organic and came from Vintage Roots. The Heaven-on-Earth Muscat is also Fairtrade-certified and £8.99 for a 50cl bottle. It would be lovely with an apple tart too, I reckon.

Scallops and Muscat

A clever combination I had last week at a French restaurant called Larcen.

Putting seafood with a sweet wine might sound a bit odd but there’s a touch of sweetness in scallops anyway and they were also accompanied by a brunoise (tiny dice) of Thai-spiced vegetables which offset the sweetness.

Traditionally dry Muscat is served in that part of France (the Languedoc) as an aperitif so it also harked back to that tradition.

I also like the presentation. The Muscat was served in a small Duralex glass and served with a straw. More Paris than Agde (which is where I was) and really quite cute.

Smoked duck and blood orange salad with Chilean Gewürztraminer

Gewürztraminer is a tricky wine to match, one that one usually falls back on recommending with oriental food, so it’s always good to come across something that’s outside the Asian register.

This was a salad I rustled up last night based on a smoked duck breast I was given to try by the Somerset smokery Brown & Forrest when I visited the other day. I immediately thought of partnering it with seasonal blood oranges and watercress but as the latter was sold out at my local greengrocer, I ended up using a bag of mixed bitter salad leaves including radicchio and chicory.

But it was the dressing that made the pairing. Having divided one orange into peeled segments I squeezed the juice of half another orange (about 2 tbsp, I’d guess) and whisked in about 2 tsp red wine vinegar, 1 tbsp of sunflower oil and 3 tbsp of olive oil (I didn’t want the olive oil flavour to be too dominant) But what made it was the seasoning - a scant teaspoon of pink peppercorns crushed with a little Maldon sea salt and I think it was that that linked so well to the wine.

That was a 2010 Chilean Gewürztraminer from Torres Santa Digna range which was apparently Fairtrade certified this year although they don’t use the logo on the bottle. It was less aromatic than most Alsace Gewürz with less of those pungent rose petal and lychee aromas that are so typical of this variety but enough to make it distinctively aromatic. A nice refreshing wine for people who generally find Gewürz too full on.

You can apparently buy it for about £7.99 from Charles Steevenson, Denhoffer Wines, Experience Wines, Partridges of Sloane St, Sandhams Wine Merchants, Telford Wines and other independent wine merchants - one way you might do your bit for Fairtrade fortnight which starts today.

Incidentally I tried the salad with an Australian Riesling and Pinot Noir I happened to have open and neither was as good. The Gewürztraminer really stole the show.

Image © opolja - Fotolia.com

Braised saltmarsh lamb at Langford Fivehead

I’ve just had a sneak preview of a very lush new B & B Langford Fivehead which opens next week (March 1st) in the Somerset Levels just outside Taunton. The building dates back to 1453 and is owned and run by former BBC Good Food editor Orlando Murrin and his partner Peter Steggall

At weekends they will also be providing supper in their splendidly baronial candlelit dining room (right). Following on from the pattern they established at their previous restaurant with rooms Le Manoir de Reynaudes in south-west France, Orlando cooks a no choice menu, country-house style, and Peter sources and pairs the wines.

This was my favourite of the matches though all were good. The meat was shoulder and leg of hogget which is year-old lamb, sourced from the Quantocks near the Somerset coast, slowly braised and served with mash and spiced Russian kale (a particularly hardy variety - just as well this winter.) It had a gorgeous, slightly gamey flavour which was perfectly offset by a dark, dusky Sicilian red Azienda Agricola Ceuso 2005, a blend of Nero d’Avola, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot.

I was also impressed how well the wine went with a selection of cheeses including King’s Favourite a washed-rind cheese from Dorset producer Cranborne Chase and a Welsh blue called Perl Las from Caws Cenarth - not always easy with a red.

We started with a lovely salad of smoked eel, duck egg and hazelnuts which Peter paired with a Domaine Mas Saint Laurent Picpoul de Pinet but then I know I’m always banging on about smoked eel . . .

*Incidentally - and nothing to do with food and wine matching - the house has an Aeolian harp, a box strung with harp strings that resonate in the wind and emit curious and mystical sounds. Worth going for that alone . . .

I stayed at Langford Fivehead as Orlando and Peter’s guest. Photograph by Steve Dalton.