Spicy prawns and Chilean riesling

Last week I hosted a fabulous wine dinner at my local Indian restaurant Nutmeg in Bristol. We’d had the opportunity to have a run through beforehand and I was really happy with all the wines which were chosen in conjunction with their supplier Talking Wines.

If I had to pick out one pairing it would be one of the starters - Madras Jhinga - a king prawn cooked with black pepper and shrimp paste which went brilliantly with a zesty 2016 Novas Grand Reserva riesling from Chile’s Bio Bio valley, proving yet again how well riesling can handle spicy food.

But that’s typically not how Indian meals progress - the prawn was part of a line-up of four starters including an octopus onion bhaji (yes, really! SO good) a chicken tikka and tandoori rabbit. You could of course have drunk the riesling with all of them but I think the Domaine des Tourelles Lebanese rosé we had as another option worked best across the board.

What the tasting underlined is that wine can be just as good if not a better partner for Indian food as lager, especially when it’s executed to this high level and - interesting point to note - when the dishes are dry rather than heavily sauced. That definitely helped.

See also What wine to pair with curry: my top 5 picks

Disclosure: I was paid for conducting the tasting but not required to write this post or undertake social media for the restaurant.

Aubergines with walnut sauce and amber wine

It’s hard to pick out one pairing out of the multitude of dishes we were served with amber or orange wine during my first visit to Georgia last week but I’m going for one we barely ever failed to find on the table - grilled aubergine with walnut sauce.

Amber is the name that Georgians are increasingly using for 'skin contact' white wines which are made in qvevri - large egg-shaped clay pots which are buried in the ground. The juice is left in contact with the grape skins for a period that can range from a few days to a few months and accounts for the deep colour and exotic dried fruit flavours (often peach, apricot and quince) of many of the wines.

They are more structured and tannic than a classic white wine so pick up well on bitter and savoury flavours especially walnuts and aubergines (eggplant), both of which are ubiquitous in Georgia. The two together make the perfect amber wine pairing.

We were served this particular dish at Shumi winery and it would go particularly well with their 2017 Iberiuli Mtsvane Qvevri Dry amber wine (which you can find in a Tblisi wine shop called 8000 vintages) but other richly flavoured amber wines would work brilliantly too.

You can find a similar recipe here.

I was invited to Georgia by Georgian Wines and hosted at the meal by Shumi.

Slow-cooked salmon with a yuzu-flavoured beer

I dithered between two brilliant beer pairings at the British Guild of Beer Writers Beer Meets Food event at the Wild Beer Co, Wapping Wharf last week, both of which involved citrus.

The first was a dish of slow cooked salmon with spiced and pickled cucumber and herb crème fraîche which was served with the Wild Beer Co’s Yokai, a 4.5% beer brewed with yuzu (a Japanese citrus fruit), kelp seaweed and Sichuan peppercorns. Beer doesn’t generally exhibit acidity but this was a wonderfully refreshing counterpoint to the richness of the salmon.

The other was even more daring - a lemon tart served with chantilly cream and Sleeping Lemons sour beer which is made with salty preserved lemons. I would never have thought it would have been able to handle the sweetness of the dessert but it just piled lemon flavour on lemon in the most delicious fashion.

The only reason why I went for the salmon pairing as my match of the week is that it’s probably more to most beer drinkers' taste and easier to replicate - although you’d probably have to pick up a can of Yokai for the full effect (The Wild Beer Co sells it on their website for £2.50) Not that that's any hardship ...

You may also like to check out 10 Great Wine Pairings with Salmon

I attended the BGBW lunch as a presenter, talking about how the seasons can affect our choice of beer. (Both these strike me as really summery)

Duck casserole with Vilarnau Els Capricis Cava

There’s a certain repertoire of ingredients and dishes that are regularly paired with vintage champagnes and other sparkling wines - luxury foods like lobster, turbot, sweetbreads and even roast chicken but until last week’s trip to the Cava region I would never have thought of pairing them with a casserole

The region has a new classification for its top wines which is Cava de Paraje Calificado. Wines that qualify must meet strict requirements including that they must come from a single vineyard, from vines that are a minimum of 10 years old and must be aged on their lees for at least 36 months

The Vilarnau Else Capricis 2014 that was paired with this dish doesn’t currently have CPC status but could well get it if it is approved by the panel which is made up of independent judges as well as industry professionals.

It’s made from the local Xarel-lo grape variety and is fermented in 250 litre chestnut wood barrels giving it a really lush, rich character that is surprising in so young a wine.

Like other top cavas we tasted it’s also a Brut Nature - i.e. a sparkling wine without any added dosage (the sweet liquor with which most sparkling wines are topped up)

But duck casserole? Well, it's a local speciality and much loved in the region - Bruno Colomer Marti, the winemaker of Cordoniu also told us he liked to drink Paraje cava with a casserole. The key I think was that the dish was rich, slightly fatty and a touch sweet thanks to the prunes that were also an ingredient. (I reckon you could have added chestnuts too)

Champagne, even with dosage, would have been too dry I think. Vintage cava could and did cope.

I travelled to Penedes as a guest of DO Cava.