Cheese soufflé and old Sauternes

OK, OK. It wasn’t just *any* Sauternes but a bottle of 2003 Chateau d’Yquem and not just *any* old cheese soufflé but a Stinking Bishop double baked soufflé with hazelnuts and Comté sauce with pear, apple and ginger chutney

It was the final course at a splendidly lavish wine dinner at Bob Bob Ricard City which kicked off with 1996 Dom Pérignon and included a 2018 Saint Aubin 1er cru Les Charmois from Domaine Paul Pillot which went beautifully with my truffle, potato and mushroom vareniki (quite a similar match to this).

I also ordered* the spectacularly glossy chicken and champagne pie which would also have gone with the Dom Pérignon but was actually rather good with a 2006 Chateau Giscours Margaux (in magnum), better, to my surprise, than the 2017 Domaine Chanson 1er cru Clos du Roi Beaune which was still a bit youthful.

I don’t imagine you’re going to have a bottle of 20 year old Yquem to hand (me neither) but you could try the same trick with any bottle of Sauternes you’ve forgotten about in the wine rack or a bin end if you’re lucky enough to run across one in a local wine shop. The wine was really quite evolved, almost caramelised in taste like a tarte tatin, but still perfectly offset the richness of the cheese. Some clever pairing there from Head of Wine Giacomo Recchia.

What’s so clever about both branches of BBR (there’s another one in Soho) is that the mark-up on all their fine wines is a comparatively reasonable (for the quality and rarity of the wines) £75. Chateau d’Yquem 2003 is currently on the wine list for £32/47 for a 50ml/75ml glass while Dom Pérignon is £38 for an unusually generous 125ml glass (but you can have a glass of Beaumont des Crayères champagne for £15).

It’s all wildly over the top but fun for a special occasion.

* Love the fact that you can order from the à la carte menu in the private dining room.

As you might have guessed I ate at the restaurant as a guest!

For other Sauternes pairings see here

Wood-roasted fish and assyrtiko

This might not sound like the most cutting edge pairing - unless you haven’t heard of assyrtiko which is perfectly possible - but bear with as they say …

It’s Santorini’s signature grape variety and creates superbly elegant dry white wines so why wouldn’t it go with roast or grilled fish (which I seem to remember was grouper)?

That’s academic anyway. The key point was the different textures of fish. The flesh was as you’d expect, fine, sweet and delicate but the skin which had been enhanced by what I imagine was wood roasting, was the thing, Crisp, slightly chewy and umami-rich it went brilliantly well with the 2018 Gaia wild ferment assyrtiko we were drinking.

My picture of the fish is rubbish so the shot above is from a photo library but here's the view from the taverna, To Pasaraki. Not too shabby, eh?

Assyrtiko, as we discovered, goes with absolutely everything you’d be likely to eat on the island but it was this insight that textured older vintages play particularly well with a whole roast fish that was illuminating.

Tou can buy the current 2021 vintage in the UK from allaboutwine.com for £29.49 which might sound expensive but is cheap, by Santorini standards, for a wine of this quality. If you buy some I’d hang onto it for a couple of years.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Gaia wines. For more assyrtiko pairings read this very knowledgeable piece by Peter Pharos.

The best food pairings for Assyrtiko.

The top photo by JGA at shutterstock.com is of a roast grouper. Not the one I'm describing but near enough!

Petit Munster and Gewürztraminer

Sometimes Match of the Week is not so much about an undiscovered pairing but one that’s executed in a particularly inventive way. Which was absolutely the case at a dinner at Monica Galetti’s restaurant Mere last week with the famous Alsace producer Famille Hugel.

She paired a cheese course of Petit Munster, a washed rind cheese from the same region, with toasted rosehip bread and gewürztraminer jelly with a magnificent 2012 Grossi Laue Gewürztraminer. The cheese was perfectly matured but not over-ripe and the touch of sweetness in the accompaniments were just enough to enhance the opulence of the wine.

You can still buy the 2012 from Hedonism in London for £48.40 which is obviously not cheap but you could obviously substitute a less expensive gewürztraminer, though ideally with a couple of years bottle age. And you can find Petit Munster in good speciality cheese shops like the Fine Cheese Company

I also loved a dish of stonebass with razor clams, monks beard, fennel and wild garlic with Hugel’s 2014 Jubilee riesling - again quite bold flavours to partner with a mature wine but the riesling stood up to it.

For other gewürztraminer pairings see The best food pairings for Gewürztraminer.

I attended the dinner as a guest of Mere.

Salad caprese and malagousia

One of the objectives of the organisers of our trip to Greece last week was to try to show how Greek wines pair with other international cuisines and flavours. It resulted in some quite bizarre dishes like black eye beans and kiwi fruit and chicken with carrot cream and tangerine gel but also provided some useful new insights.

One was how assyrtiko - Greece’s most popular and famous white wine - is not the only Greek wine you can pair with tomatoes. Malagousia, another crisp dry white but with a more of a floral character, works too.

It proved a really good match for a caprese-style salad with tomatoes, mozzarella and a zucchini/courgette pesto - against all my expectations, highlighting the tomato flavour. (My photo was so rubbish that this is a stock photo but the dish we tried also had ham in it.)

We actually tasted it blind as one of the rules of the trip, which was funded by the EU, was that we were not allowed to know what wines we were tasting as the focus was supposed to be on the PGIs or sub-regions but I later discovered it came from the Petriessa Estate on the island of Evia. (Seems counter-intuitive when you’re talking to the trade but there you go ...)

Malagousia also proved a good pairing with taramasalata and would also work well with classic Greek meze like hummus, tzatziki, olives and vine leaves and with spanakopita.

I participated in the trip as a guest of Wines of Central Greece. Photo by Viktor1 at shutterstock.com