Chocolate terrine with Brachetto d'Acqui 2007

It’s a mystery to me why we need a Chocolate Week. Surely no-one (except aberrants like myself who have an inexplicable preference for potatoes) needs encouraging to eat chocolate. But there we have it and you’ll find plenty of opportunities to enjoy your favourite food in the country’s classiest chocolate shops over the next few days.

So this week’s match had to be chocolate-related really and the best match I’ve had recently was at the Piemontese wine dinner I mentioned the other day - a rich chocolate terrine with roasted hazelnuts (above) with a Brachetto d’Acqui from Contero.

Now I’ve written many times before about the virtues of sweet reds with dark chocolate but it was extraordinary how well this very light (5.5%) sparkling dry red paired with such a rich dessert thanks to a bitter cherry twist that picked out the accompanying dark berry sauce quite beautifully. I suspect it would also go well with desserts that contained blackberries. You can find it in one of this country’s most interesting wine merchants The Flying Corkscrew and also in everywine.co.uk which charges £75.04 for a case of six.

If you want to pursue your passion for chocolate you can find out more about what events are being held this week in the events section of www.chocolate-week.co.uk. There seem to be tastings of chocolate with every conceivable beverage including wine, cognac, tea, sake and even a cheese and chocolate matching though I’m not quite so sure about the wisdom of that one . . .

Mushroom risotto with Barbera

I went to a Piemontese wine dinner last week at a local Italian restaurant in Bristol, Prosecco about which I’ve written before. There were some very good matches - along with a couple of off-key ones, one of which involved a faulty bottle which the wine merchant introducing the event seemed determined to disregard despite grumblings from the floor.

One of the best was a fabulous mushroom risotto which had been paired with a very attractive 2003 Barbera d’Asti Superiore ‘Tere Caude’, Ca’ del Matt. Fruity Italian reds tend to work well with mushroom risotto (Dolcetto is another example) but this was a particularly good match - a wine with great intensity and character but also enough bottle age to mellow the youthful exuberance that the winemaker - a New Zealander called Matt Thompson - had introduced to this traditional style.

It’s a useful wine that would comfortably take you right through an Italian meal - slow roast pork with fennel would be another good pairing. You can buy it from www.everywine.co.uk.

Image © kazoka303030 - Fotolia.com

Macaroni cheese and Montagne-St-Emilion

This week is British Cheese Week - and, by the looks of it, the start of autumn proper - so what better time to rustle up a macaroni cheese (or mac and cheese as they call it in the US)?

I made one for the first time for a while the other day for a new book on cheese I’m writing and reminded myself just what perfect comfort food it was.

I matched it - with some trepidation - with a red Bordeaux, a 2005 Château Gachon Cuvée St Georges Montagne-St-Emilion (£11.99 from Laithwaites) I’d been tasting but it hit the spot perfectly.

That doesn’t follow that any Bordeaux would work - some would be too tannic, others too lightweight but this was an exceptionally supple, typically ‘Right Bank’ blend of Merlot (70%), Cabernet Franc (20%) and Cabernet Sauvignon, (10%) with very well integrated tannins. It picked up beautifully on the creamy sauce and crispy topping - but then it would have worked with a lot of things, including turkey if you’re starting to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas.

A real crowd pleaser - and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way!

Tarte au citron with Helmut Lang Beerenauslese Chardonnay

Citrus flavours are difficult to match with wine, as I’ve mentioned before, but a classic lemon tart with its combination of sharpness and sweetness is particularly tricky. The better a tart is the more it will tend to strip the flavour out of any accompanying wine, so much so that it’s almost worth serving a shop-bought one (of which there are some very good examples) if you have a serious dessert wine to show off.

The other day though, I came across an excellent pairing which was a 2006 Helmut Lang Beerenauslese Chardonnay from Austria which Tanners sells for the very reasonable price of £9.90 a half bottle (a bargain for a sweet wine of this quality).

The reason it worked so well was that it was exceptionally liquorous, coating the palate so that the sharpness of the lemon balanced but didn’t dominate. It would also be a fantastic wine to have in your cellar for Christmas drinking which I suppose we need to start thinking about soon.

Heavens - how fast it comes round!