Assyrtiko and cold herb soup

As Greece’s best known grape variety you’d probably think of pairing assyrtiko with meze or seafood but as this week’s match of the week shows it’s good away from its home territory too.

The soup was one of a number of courses at one of my favourite local restaurants, Wilsons in Bristol. It was served cold and was light, fresh and gorgeously silky, topped with salted cream and a spoonful of Exmoor caviar. (I reckon it was both the slight bitterness of the herbs and the saltiness of the cream that made it so especially delicious. Being slightly saline itself, assyrtiko which is a sharp citrussy white in a similar register to albariño, likes salty food too.

It also went brilliantly with some goats curd tartlets and Jan Wilson’s ‘farm taco’ a crunchy little mouthful of home-grown herbs and something else delicious folded, taco-style, into a bigger leaf. Again, there was a bitter edge there but bitter isn’t bad - think dark chocolate and espresso coffee, both seductively bitter tastes.

The assyrtiko was a 2019 from Papagiannakos in Attica and I see you can buy it for £14.50 currently from Hennings wine.

For other suggestions with herbs see What wines (or other drinks) should you pair with herbs

Artichoke and sheep cheese salad and Ciello bianco

Much is made of the difficulty of pairing wine with artichokes but this week’s match of the week proves it’s far from impossible with the right accompaniments

Chef Cosmo Sterck of Marmo in Bristol created this great salad of marinated artichokes, spelt, Berkswell sheep cheese and yoghurt with went perfectly with the fresh slightly hazy Ciello Bianco we’d ordered which I always think has something in common with a witbier (which you could obviously drink too).

It’s made from catarratto, comes from Sicily and is unfined and unfiltered but not scary at all for those of you who are natural wine sceptics. It’s also one of those hugely adaptable wines you can drink with all kinds of antipasti (it was also great with the salame and gnocco frito and gorgeous pillowy burrata they brought us*).

The key to the pairing, as I’ve pointed out before, is introducing a citrus note to the dish. The tangy sheep cheese and yoghurt obviously helped too

You can buy the wine from indies such as Buon Vino for £8.95 a bottle.

For more wine suggestions with artichokes see Pairing wine and artichokes

And if you're into artichokes make this delicioius artichoke and preserved lemon dip

*these dishes were complimentary. We paid for the rest of the meal.

Pistachio and date cookies with Cavendish Vin de Liqueur

An incredible pairing this week and one I’m afraid you’re unlikely to be able to replicate - so far as the wine element is concerned anyway. But there are alternatives which I’ll suggest.

My cookbook club finally got together in person after over a year and celebrated with a feast from one of my favourite cookbooks Sami Tamimi and Tara Wigley’s Falastin, a marvellous book of Palestinian food (Sami himself is Palestinian).

We all brought a dish (I made the sumac onion and herb oil buns which you can see on my food_writer instagram feed) but my friend, food writer Xanthe Clay, made these ma’amoul bars which are light, crumbly cookies stuffed with either pistachio or date paste. They’re delicately spiced, fragrant but not overly sweet and Xanthe served them with strawberry ice cream (bouza) made with mastic and fresh strawberries.

Cue a dessert wine - maybe a muscat - but what we in fact had was a 1956 vintage of Cavendish, a South African 'vin de liqueur' which our host Luke more than generously shared with us. It’s a tawny port-style wine, bottled after 25 years in barrel and still vibrant after 65 years but without that extended oak-aged character that can make older ports taste more about the wood than the fruit. In some ways it was more like a sherry and just unbelievably delicious.

Anyway I reckon these cookies would also make a good accompaniment for other aged fortified wines like tawny ports, VORS sherries, old madeiras or mature Australian stickies for which it’s hard to find a good dessert pairing but with which you might just want a nibble of something sweet.

An amazing experience.

Roast beetroot salad and a juicy Aussie grenache

I nearly saved this Aussie grenache for my wine of the week it was so good but it made a great match with this beetroot salad too

As you will see it wasn’t the only thing on the plate - there was a scotch egg and slaw as well, picked up from a lovely small cafe and takeaway called Soulshine in Bridport where we were staying.

It was the beetroot salad though which was the key to the match. It was, if I remember right, roast beetroot, quinoa and purple sprouting broccoli and just a brilliant pairing with this vibrant Aussie grenache blend* called Tabula Rasa V18R made by a couple of Masters of Wine called Wild and Wilder.

It’s packaged, craft beer style, in a 50cl crown cap bottle and despite coming from the 2018 harvest is still wonderfully bright and juicy. We found it in a wine shop called Morrish & Banham but it’s widely available online for £9-10 a bottle from - among others - Noble Green and Solent Cellar though some shops are currently out of stock. We piled straight in but you could chill it slightly. Perfect for barbecues too.

*Grenache, Shiraz, Mataro (Mourvèdre) and Carignan

For other beetroot pairings see The best wines to pair with beetroot