Alta Langa spumante and pizza

Last week I was in Piemonte exploring the world of vermouth with Roberto Bava of Cocchi. I discovered many startlingly good pairings about which more about in due course but the one I was most intrigued by was their Alta Langa sparkling wine with pizza, not a combination I would have expected at all.

The pizzas, which we sampled at a pizza restaurant in Asti called cRust (no I wouldn’t have been encouraged to go there either by that name), weren’t your average pizza by any means though. The toppings were mostly fresh or very lightly cooked but what made them so especially good with sparkling wine was the incredibly light, airy crisp base, the result, apparently of a triple-fermented dough.

We tried several different toppings of which the standout combinations were the Toto Corde which is made from pinot noir and chardonnay with a napoletana-style pizza with two different kinds of tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and a basil sauce and the gloriously fruity Rosa (made 100% from pinot noir) with a topping of gorgonzola, treviso and honey.

Frustratingly the wines, which are interestingly fermented in tank rather than in the bottle, aren’t available in the UK. I suggest someone contacts Cocchi and offers to import them ;-)

You can read more about the Alta Langa denomination here.

Other good pairings with pizza

Grilled octopus and Baga

Octopus seems an unlikely ingredient to be on trend but you’ll find it on a lot of restaurant menus at the moment. It’s far from an easy creature to cook (like squid it’s classified as a cephalopod rather than a fish) and it’s a measure of the kitchen’s skill as to whether it turns out tough or not.

Bar Douro, an appealing little wine bar in Flatiron Square just down the road from Borough Market passed with flying colours - it was deeply savoury and beautifully tender, served with deep-fried and puréed sweet potato .

I had been drinking a white at the time it appeared but immediately thought I’d prefer a red once I tasted it. They suggested a 2015 Nossa Calcario Baga from the Bairrada region from a woman winemaker I very much like called Filipa Pato together with her husband William Wouters.

For a wine that was awarded an impressive 96 points by Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate it was listed at a very reasonable £12 a glass. (It retails for about £32.50 from importers Clark Foyster.

It showed the fine texture and delicacy Portuguese reds are capable of and suited the octopus very well. I also remember enjoying a baga with suckling pig a while back. It’s obviously a very good food wine.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Bar Douro.

Roast beef sandwich and a Virgin Mary

I’ve got a bit obsessed with Virgin Marys (alcohol-free Bloody Marys) over the last few days.

My food writer friend Signe Johansen ordered one at a rather splendid lunch we had at Claridges and it went perfectly with a roast beef sandwich I’d chosen, one of the more affordable options on the eyewateringly expensive menu. (Still, the surroundings are wonderfully glamorous and, as you can see, the sandwich was more than generous.)

I then ordered another one yesterday at brunch at my local Bristol restaurant Wallfish where they call it a Bloody Shame and where it went brilliantly with a full English breakfast.

The robust seasoning in a Virgin Mary (generally Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco and celery salt) more than makes up for the lack of alcohol and in fact it would go equally well with a steak sandwich or a burger. There was tarragon mayo and cornichons on the sandwich which added a piquancy of their own and chimed in nicely with the spicy tomato juice.

Anchovies and alvarinho

If you don’t like fish don’t go to Olhao! Restaurants in this bustling fishing port on the Algarve serve almost nothing else which is fine with me but less good for people, like my friend J, who has a real phobia about fishbones.

That sadly meant he had to miss out on these excellent fresh anchovies - even though they were already filleted he still found their fishiness offputting.

They were scattered with pink peppercorns - an underrated spice that gave them a fragrant, spicy lift that went particularly well with the crisp young (2017) Torre de Menagem alvarinho/trejadura we’d ordered (from the Monçao e Melgaço sub-region of Vinho Verde up in the north of the country. Alvarinho is Portugal's equivalent of Spain's albarino.)

It really underlines the fact that anchovies pair well with almost any crisp white (or rosé) wine - I also enjoyed them last year in San Sebastian with Txacoli.