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

Ginger and chilli marinated aubergine with Lacryma Christi

Recently I’ve had a bit of a thing about pairing aubergines with orange wine especially if they’re cooked in a middle-Eastern style but it was actually an unusual red that went with this dish at the Uruguayan tasting at 67 Pall Mall the other day.

It was a variety that’s more common in Italy called Lacryma Christi (tear of Christ) and is generally a blend of other grapes such as Piedirosso and Sciascinoso. This version from Uruguay was made by Fiorella Faggiani Bohemian by Fiore using minimal intervention techniques (indigenous yeasts, old oak barrels and left unfined and unfiltered) and was a vibrant, slightly rustic red not dissimilar to a barbera.

It was particularly good with the aubergine which had been marinated in ginger and chilli and topped with a pepper, walnut and watercress salad - so slightly spicy but not excessively so. And relatively modest in alcohol at 13.5%. Sadly I can't find it for sale in the UK but I'm guessing an Italian Lacryma Christi Rosso would also work.

The other pairing that was great at the lunch was a crab risotto with a liine-up of different albarinos but I’m sure you can imagine that ...

I attended the lunch as a guest of Uruguay Wine.

Brined smoked pork and refosco

It’s always a toss-up whether to drink red or white wine with pork. I normally go for white but I really liked this combination of a brined smoked pork chop with a light(ish), slightly smoky refosco at Casa in Bristol the other night.

It was accompanied by yet more pork in the shape of cabbage with pancetta swimming in an indulgently buttery sauce so it could well have been that that fired the pairing too. Anyway, safe to say, refosco and pork.

Refosco is a grape from the Veneto in north east Italy. This bottle which came from Molmenti & Celot, was a 2020 Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso from just outside Venice had a lovely wild hedgerow berry fruit with a hint of bitterness that made it particularly refreshing. It would also be really good with mountain ham and other salumi (charcuterie).

You can buy it for a very reasonable £12.99 from Wanderlust wine which makes it a bit of a bargain

Casa by the way is a more casual relaunch of what used to be Peter Sanchez-Iglesias top end restaurant Casamia and I like it the better for it. It’s pricey but the food is delicious. (I was a guest btw)

Here's another type of pairing with refosco you might enjoy.

Spicy spam and Mosel riesling

I can’t say spam is high up on my list of things to eat let alone pair with wine but in New York last week I discovered a brilliant match for it at a quirky Hawaiian Lower East Side restaurant called Noreetuh

Mind you it’s hard not to find a good riesling pairing there as the list features one of the best selections I’ve seen along with a terrific range of burgundies thanks to the obsessive interest of its engaging GM and co-owner Jin Ahn.

The combination that particularly stood out was one of the musubi or sushi-like Hawaiian snacks just described as ‘spicy spam’ with pickled jalapeno and soy mayo with the simple but delicious 2021 Julian Heart 1000l Mosel riesling that was on by the glass that day and which I could have happily carried on drinking with the rest of my meal had there not been so many other tempting glasses to choose from.

You can buy it for £27.50 from Natty Boy in the UK or from Princeton Corkscrew if you’re in the US for $22. They (Princetown) also provide a bit of background about the producer, who I shall look out for from now on, on their website

See also The best food pairings for dry - and off-dry - riesling