Duck paté, rillettes and red Anjou

Last week we spent 24 hours in Cheltenham, mainly to eat at Le Champignon Sauvage about which I’ll be posting a review tomorrow. We also had lunch at a pub/bistro I’d heard good things about called the Royal Well Tavern which has this year been awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand and recently picked up a glowing review from the Observer’s restaurant critic, Jay Rayner

It’s run by a couple of young guys called Sam Peaman and Humphrey Fletcher who both worked at The Glasshouse in Kew. Fletcher, the chef, has also worked at Kensington Place and The River Café which gives the restaurant impeccable Modern British credentials.

Because of our blowout the night before we stuck to the starters which included a half pint of prawns and mayonnaise, warm chorizo and chickpeas, a particularly tasty lamb kofta with spiced aubergine and mint yoghurt and the dish that is the subject of today’s match - duck pâté with duck rillettes and cornichons.

I instinctively reached for the Loire red that was featured on the menu with it - a light, fruity, Cabernet Franc-based Anjou l’Ardoise 2008 from Domaine des Rochelles that had just the right degree of freshness and acidity to offset the fattiness of the charcuterie.

A perfect match. And a very nice restaurant indeed.

Dark chocolate tart with 10 year old Tawny

One gets so used to partnering dark chocolate with sweet red wines, most notably port, that it’s easy to overlook other equally successful options. This was a brilliant combination I came across - somewhat improbably - at the game and Burgundy dinner I reported on last week.

The ‘tawny’ was not Portuguese but a delicious Australian ‘sticky’ made in the Barossa Valley by Grant Burge. It was slightly sweeter than most tawny ports, almost more like an oloroso sherry with a delicious rich raisiny character that was just perfect with the rich, dark, dense chocolate and its accompanying scoop of vanilla ice cream - like rum and raisin ice cream in a glass.

You can apparently buy it for about £15.49 from independent stockists such as Amps Fine Wine, Ann et Vin, Hailsham Cellars, Kingsgate Wines and www.southaustralianwines.com

Dorset Blue Vinney and Bristol Supreme Sweet Sherry

This is the most interesting and original wine and cheese pairing of the four* I devised for my talks at the Bristol Wine and Food Fair over the weekend. I wanted to come up with a variation on the usual port and Stilton combo and this was it.

Dorset Blue Vinney, which was supplied by Chandos Deli in Bristol, is a lovely cheese that has been revived by Michael and Emily Davies at Woodbridge Farm in Dorset after falling into disuse (possibly because it is alleged that the cheese was originally blued by dunking old boots and bits of harness in the milk!) It’s creamier and less crumbly than a Stilton, slightly saltier - more like a Gorgonzola in taste and texture. A really delicious cheese.

With it I paired Avery’s Bristol Supreme Sweet Sherry, a gorgeous Spanish style oloroso sherry made for the company by one of the best sherry producers, Lustau, and an absolute snip at £7.29 for a full size bottle. Although it’s very sweet it’s not remotely cloying and the flavours - plump raisins, black treacle and Christmas cake - are so complex it makes the perfect foil for the cheese, one that you could accentuate by adding raisins, fresh Medjool dates, apricots and some grilled walnut bread to the cheese plate. One to remember for Christmas.

* The other pairings were Dorstone goats cheese with Avery’s Touraine Sauvignon Blanc, Berkswell sheeps’ cheese with 2001 Marques de Solariego Rioja Reserva and Keen’s Cheddar with Los Vascos Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 from Chile. All the wines came from Avery's and the cheeses from Trethowan's Dairy, both exhibitors at the show.

Image © stockcreations - Fotolia.com

Calf's kidney and Côte Rôtie

My match of the week for last week has to come from the sublime WIMPS lunch I had at the Ledbury which members can read about here. It was hard to decide which the best pairing was but I think the calf’s kidney and 1998 Gilles Barge Côte Rôtie just shaved it.

Interestingly that wasn’t the wine I liked the best out of the line-up of three that were served with the dish - that distinction went to the gorgeously supple, fragrant Jean Paul Jamet 1998 Côte Rôtie but the Barge was the one that worked best with the dish.

The kidney was cooked in smoked kidney fat with grilled onions, bacon and sweet sherry and served very rare. The umami taste of the onions and bacon certainly contributed to the match but the sherry, which added a note of sweetness to the dish, may have been the element that threw the Jamet slightly off course. (A drier sherry might possibly have preserved its character better).

The Barge, which had a slightly gamey, ‘animal’ quality flourished by contrast, becoming fruitier and more opulent. A match where the whole was more than the sum of its very considerable parts - quite some achievement.