Roast grouse and saperavi

I’m not sure how many of you actually eat grouse - I’m not sure I would if I didn’t have a chef friend who loves to cook it. As a result I get to have a grouse dinner every year and this year’s was last week.

It came accompanied by an avalanche of veggies (I counted five including beetroot, red cabbage, runner beans, new potatoes and watercress) as well as bread sauce and crab apple jelly. Usually gravy too although Stephen (Markwick) had decided that might be overdoing things in terms of richness. We also had crisps rather than the traditional game chips which is a useful shortcut and entirely justified given how good crisps are these days.

We’ve worked through all the usual suspects winewise (Bandol being a particular favourite) so I thought I’d take along a bottle of the Orgo saperavi I’d just bid for in the Bid for Beirut fundraiser following the horrific explosion there a few weeks ago.

Saperavi is Georgia's main red grape and the wine was fermented in qvevri, the clay amphoras which is the traditional way of making wine in the country.

Given it was from the 2018 vintage it was still a little young but the dark, damsony fruit was spot on with the grouse and the intense flavours of the beetroot and cabbage. An older vintage - and it does age well - would have been perfect. You can buy it in the UK from Roberson Wine and NY Wines for about £20 a bottle.

I’m thinking orange wine would work too. Shall have to try that next year!

For other grouse pairings see Must grouse pairings be classic? and how to cook it, following Stephen's method, here.

Steak and Trousseau

'Hmmm, steak and red wine - nothing particularly original about that' you might be thinking but bear with, as they say.

Trousseau which comes from the Arbois region of eastern France is a much lighter red wine than those you would probably normally think of pairing with steak and in this case - a 2018 from Domaine des Bodines I was sent as part of the September selection from a new set-up called Oranj - a natural wine to boot.

The steak - a recipe from Sabrina Ghayour’s excellent new book Simply* wasn’t cooked conventionally either but cut into cubes, rolled in a spicy dry rub, seared and served with labneh (soft cheese), pul biber (chilli) butter and crispy onions. So not the kind of steakhouse steak that sets off a cabernet to perfection.

In fact it was the freshness of the wine that worked particularly well with the spicing offset by the smooth creaminess of the labneh. Which goes to show, as I’m always saying, that it’s the way you cook a dish and the flavours you put with your base ingredient that determines the wine match

You can order the September selection from Oranj which contains other natural wines from the French side of the Jura mountains, online at oranj.co.uk. And listen to this track while you're drinking it!

See also The best wine pairings for steak

*Here is one of the other delicious recipes from the book - yoghurt and spice-roasted salmon.

I was sent the wine as a press sample and the book as a review copy.

Cote Hill Blue and blackberry mead

It’s not often that food and drink that goes together perfectly turns up at exactly the same time but serendipitously I was sent a selection of delicious meads last week just as my order of blue cheese from The Courtyard Dairy arrived.

The combination I thought went best was Cote Blue, a gorgeous gooey unpasteurised Brie-style blue from Market Rasen in Lincolnshire with an absolutely delicious blackberry mead from a Welsh producer called Afon Mêl.

Obviously it followed the established pattern of pairing berry flavoured drinks with a blue but was a more unusual match than the usual port and stilton combination.

I haven’t been particularly taken with the meads I’ve tasted in the past, finding them too sweet and heavy but this was fresh, delicate and really moreish. I was thinking it would go well with a blackberry and apple crumble then found they suggested actually adding it to one which I imagine would be REALLY good.

The blue (which was perfectly matured - as always from Courtyard) was also stunning with a 2016 Prophet’s Rock pinot from their Home vineyard in New Zealand's Central Otago region but then what isn’t?

For other blue cheese pairings see What kind of wine goes with blue cheese?

Bao and Bacchus

Who would have thought a few years ago that it would be as easy to drink local wine in southern England as it is over the channel in northern France? (Well, almost. I’m not counting Burgundy!)

So when I stayed at The Ollerod in Beaminster in West Dorset last week I thought I’d try the local Furleigh Estate Bacchus. But would it go with my spicy starter of crispy prawn and kimchi bao with sriracha mayonnaise?

The answer of course is yes, otherwise I wouldn’t be telling you about it would I?

The bao bun was flavoured with squid ink which is why it’s black (sorry for rubbish low-light photo) and neither the kimchi or the siracha was too hot but it still packed quite a punch. But then the Bacchus - from the excellent 2018 vintage - was quite full-flavoured too - in some ways more like an Aussie riesling than its normal drinkalike, sauvignon blanc. And you’d expect Aussie riesling to go with this kind of food. (Note the filling was prawn - I'd have been less inclined to drink it with a pork-stuffed bao.)

Anyway it goes to show that you can always be surprised - in this case pleasantly - by a wine pairing you wouldn’t have predicted. I really liked the food at Ollerod though it’s quite a pricey place to stay, in August at least. Chris Staines, a chef I greatly admired when he was cooking at Allium in Bath, owns the restaurant with his partner Silvana and is in the kitchen.

Furleigh has some other excellent pairing suggestions for Bacchus on their website on which it is unfortunately sold out* “Perfect served chilled with seafood such as ‘moules marinères' or flat fish such as lemon sole, plaice, brill or turbot. Enjoy it with goats cheese, or asparagus drizzled with lemon butter. Also good with Japanese sushi and pickled ginger, but go easy on the wasabi. Try it with Scandinavian pickled fish such as soused herrings or rollmops.”

A model wine pairing note!

See also my six best wine pairings for Bacchus

*although try their sparkling wines too.