Cider and tapas

Cider isn’t, I admit, the first drink I’d pair with tapas but when I spotted on the menu of newly opened Bar 44 in Bristol that they had Spanish ‘sidra’ on tap - the first, they claimed, in the country - I had to try it.

it was a Spanish cider called Avalon at 5.5% - rather higher in alcohol than you’d have thought and comes from Gijon in the cider drinking Asturias region. On a hot day it was really quaffable - dry with a good strong, appley flavour - and went happily with all the dishes we threw at it from jamon iberico (iberico ham) to hake with cockles.

The dishes I think it paired with best were some delicious roast chicken croquetas with crisp smoked morcilla and a pea purée and a seasonal fish and shellfish fritura with a punchy alioli (garlic mayonnaise) - both fried, note. Cider, like beer, tends to work well with fried foods.

Do I prefer it to my normal go to of fino sherry or cava? I wouldn’t go that far but then I’m not a regular cider drinker. If you are you may be pleased to know, if you don’t already, that it will take tapas in its stride.

See also 6 of the best Spanish wines to pair with tapas

Champagne and pigs tails

Champagne, we all know, goes with practically everything but PIG TAILS? Surely not.

Well yes, if they’re in the capable hands of chef Rob Roy Cameron of Gazelle in Mayfair who hammers them out into fine crispy shards and partners them with Jerusalem artichokes (another champagne-loving ingredient) and a Manhattan jus. Fried things, as I’ve said before, go exceptionally well with bubbles - in fact I’m hard pushed to think of a still wine that would have partnered this clever dish better.

Two other matches among the small plates we sampled stood out with the champagne - (a rich, Benoit Lahaye Brut Nature): a dish of mushrooms with pine nuts and wild garlic (well, mushrooms flatter everything) and another umami-rich dish of squid with sandalwood cured jowl and girolles (yes, more mushrooms but the dish was more about the pork)

The pairing was the more surprising given that the restaurant heavily features cocktails devised by leading mixologist and co-owner Tony Conigliaro so I was expecting to drink them through the meal too but the negroni I ordered, while delicious, was just a bit too strong and sweet for the delicate flavours of the food.

We did however try one of the cocktail pairings in the bar upstairs: a Serafin (tequila, pear shrub, pear liqueur and ginger beer) which was perfect with a delicate crisp corn tostada and a champagne cocktail - the Twinkle, I think - with Grapefruit Goldy (whatever that is), citrus and champagne with what looked like an ice-cream wafer, but turned out to be frozen yeast and taste like frozen parmesan. (Cameron used to work for El Bulli.) Quite gorgeous.

I guess the champagne would have gone pretty well with that too.

I ate at Gazelle as a guest of the restaurant.

Junmai sake with cheung fun, asparagus and shiitake mushrooms

It’s partly because not enough restaurants offer the option but I don’t drink sake often enough in Asian restaurants. (And yes, I know Asian is an imprecise term but that’s how many describe the food they offer)

Anyway proof, yet again that it is a reliable pairing at dinner last week at Wokyko Kauto in Bristol where I drank an Evening Sky junmai sake with a range of dishes including a brilliantly clever vegan dish of roasted cheung fun (rice noodle roll), apsaragus, shiitake mushrooms and Sichuan jus that had all the depth of flavour of a meat dish.

It also worked with an intensely flavoured onglet steak in black bean sauce (as surprisingly, did the tail end of a gin and tonic, made with their own Woky gin which has been developed for them by the local Psychopomp distillery and which is flavoured with nashi pear).

And - although you hardly needed a liquid accompaniment - with a moreish bowl of Korean fried chicken ramen with a deeply flavoured umami broth which is apparently made with serrano ham bones.

I’d like to try one of the other sakes when I go back (and it is a question of when rather than if. I definitely need that tang (umami broth) fix!)

I ate at Wokyko Kauto as a guest of the restaurant

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.