A Birds Eye pea and truffle buttie with a glass of Meursault? It could only be Heston . . .

Six top chefs reveal their best ever food and wine match and what they'll be eating and drinking this Christmas.

Heston Blumenthal
The Fat Duck

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever experienced?
I had Birds Eye peas just heated up nice and warm and crushed with butter and made a sandwich with them on Mothers Pride bread with about a third of a white truffle sliced in there. With Domaine D'Auvenay Meursault. It was delicious.

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
I drank a 1989 Le Pin on the birth of my first born son Jack.

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
It depends really on my mood or if I am eating, where I am. However I generally choose red - just a little tannin, not too much, a little oaky but not too much and not overly-extracted.

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Well actually this year the family and I are off to Whistler skiing and staying at the Four Seasons so whatever they have on the menu. However we will be skiing on Christmas day so probably a salad up a mountain for lunch
and dinner at the hotel.

Pierre Gagnaire
Pierre Gagnaire, Paris and Sketch, London

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever experienced?
A very old Chateauneuf-du-Pape 1961 with a hare terrine. That was back to 1990...

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
Obvious answer: a Richebourg (I forget the vintage)

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
White Burgundy

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Oysters from Brittany, served with slices of warm 'Morteau? sausage (from the Jura, in France). Then homemade foie gras, roast 'chapon de Bresse? served with sliced chestnuts cooked in butter and honey and a walnut tart served with a caramel and salted butter ice cream. The wines will be: Château Bellegrave Pomerol and Meursault 'Charme? from Domaine Jean-Marc Roulot.

Rowley Leigh
Le Café Anglais

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever experienced?
Montgomery cheddar and Auslese, Maximin Grunhaus 1996

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
Chateau Latour 1962 in 1973, the first time I tasted great wine. No label on the bottle and the identity only revealed by the cork.

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
Which do I not?

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Turkey. Burgundy from Sylvain Cathiard and a few other things . . .

Mitch Tonks
The Seahorse, Dartmouth

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever experienced?
White truffle over warm egg yolk and cream with a Riesling Clos St Hune '89

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
There are many but a 1978 Mondavi Cabernet drunk from a double magnum at home was particularly good

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
Usually Italian. I like Barbera from the Braida winery

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Le Montrachet '88, Coche Dury Meursault '91 2004 Felton Road Block 3 Pinot Noir

Antonin Bonnet
The Greenhouse

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever experienced?
A 1968 Amarone with grouse.

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
Tasting a 1968 Amarone, and most recently a 1981 Chateau Latour - both were stunning.

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
I wouldn't confess to being the most knowledgeable wine enthusiast, but when I am drinking wine at home I tend to go for something decent and affordable - a good Côtes du Rhône for example.

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Wild boar casserole with ceps with a good Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

Henry Harris
Racine

What's the most outstanding food and wine combination you've ever
experienced?
Chateau Yquem 1976 and a bowl of trifle at the Connaught many years ago.

What's your greatest ever wine memory?
After doing the vendange with the Janouiex family in 1982 sitting down with the family at Chateau Haut Sarpe when grandpère Janoueix opened a bottle of his first vintage - 1929. It was a little past its best but to share that history with the family was unforgettable.

What wine do you drink for pleasure, to relax?
Exploring Alsace and Austria for an aperitif and then a Ridge Paso Robles Zinfandel with some roast beef

What will you be eating and drinking this Christmas?
Smoked salmon, turkey, Christmas pud and Stilton: Gruner Veltliner with the salmon, Coche Dury Pinot Noir with the turkey, a glass of Chateau de Lacquey XO Bas Armagnac with Christmas pud. As for the cheese its back to the red. I always keep it traditional and simple at Christmas.

Game pie and Listrac

A classic match for this time of year but no less enjoyable for that.

I was reminded just how good it was by a meal at a local Bristol bistro, the Primrose Café, a charming hark-back to the '70's that serves good, basic home-cooked English food.

The pie, which was really delicious with a good crisp crust and lashings of gamey gravy, came with parsnip purée and red cabbage but neither of those upset the accompanying wine - a very attractive half bottle of 1999 Château Fourcas Hosten, Listrac. (It was mid-week, so we resisted the full bottle!)

For a nine year old half bottle it was still remarkably fresh with attractive soft plummy fruit and that characteristic cedar twist that makes traditionally made clarets so appealing. It reminds one - if you need reminding - what a sympathetic pairing modestly priced claret can be. And what good value - this was only £14 on the wine list! (You can buy it from everywine.co.uk for £202.13 a case)

A mid-priced - or highly-priced Rhône or Rioja would also have worked well - this is a good dish to show off a red wine.

Image © Springfield Gallery - Fotolia.com

Chicken with peanut sauce and Faugères rosé

We liked Larcen, the restaurant that was the inspiration for two of the Clever Food Ideas last week, so much that we managed to fit in another visit before we left France. I had the plat du jour (dish of the day) - a brilliant combination of chicken in a rich peanut sauce and a 2007 Faugères rosé from H Bouchard called Abbaye Sylva Plana.

The dish was spicy without being hot. I suspect the sauce contained the Moroccan spice blend ras el hanout, which would have been a totally inauthentic addition but accounted for its fragrance and any heat was cooled by the addition of coconut milk. It made the strawberry flavours of the Faugères simply leap out of the glass. Quite lovely!

Roquefort and Loupiac

With just over three weeks to Christmas - and even less time to order the Christmas wine if you haven’t already done so - it’s time for us laggards to focus on what we’re going to be drinking and that’s what I’m going to be doing this week.

First off, a sublime sweet wine I tasted the other day at a tasting organised by a Bristol-based company called Vine Trail which supplies a number of top London restaurants including Rowley Leigh’s Le Café Anglais - a 2002 Loupiac 2002 Cuvée d’Or from Château Dauphin-Rondillon, the property’s top cuvée. I’d defy anyone to tell it from its neighbour Sauternes, so opulent and seductive is the fruit with that wonderful touch of hazelnut you find in aged sweet Bordeaux. And at £15.75 a bottle (£9.75 a half bottle) it’s a snip.

I didn’t try it with food but it would go with all the usual Sauternes suspects. Roquefort (and Stilton, plus washed rind cheeses such as Epoisses), foie gras (if you eat foie gras, duck liver parfait if you don’t), French-style apple, pear and apricot tarts and even Christmas pudding provided you added a good dollop of cream (cream always shows off Sauternes to perfection, so would showcase Loupiac too). Or simply sip it on its own. A lovely, lovely treat.