Saperavi with slow cooked wagyu beef

Continuing the exotic vibe of last week’s pairing the standout combination this week was a Georgian Saperavi with Welsh Wagyu beef!

The beef, which is raised in Montgomeryshire, is part of the tasting menu at Ynyshir, a Michelin-starred restaurant on the edge of Snowdonia national park I enthusiastically reviewed for Decanter a couple of months ago.

It’s a regular feature on their tasting menu - on this occasion brined for 4 days and cooked for 3 (I seem to remember the chef who presented it telling us) and finished on the barbecue which gave it a slightly smoky edge which was reflected in the wine.

Saperavi is one of Georgia’s indigenous and most widely planted red grape varieties and - for the geeks among you - a ‘teinturier’, a variety which gains its colour from the flesh of the grape not just the skin.

This particular example was a 2015 from Ibereli and is imported by Les Caves de Pyrène. It’s relatively light but has sufficient character to stand up to the intensely flavoured meat.

Although Ynyshir doesn’t do pairings as such, the sommelier Amelia has a knack of picking wines that will go well with her partner Gareth’s food. Another standout - and surprising - pairing was a dish of pork belly with pickled cherries and a richly flavoured ‘natural’ chardonnay called Wind Gap from Mahle in Sonoma. (That's stocked by Roberson)

Pickled cherries, pork and chardonnay? Hard to replicate but believe me it works!

The picture of of Wagyu beef was taken by HL photo. It wasn’t the beef in the restaurant which was cooked for considerably longer. (The light was too low to take a good shot)

© HL photo at fotolia.com

Margaux and Turkish chicken with walnut sauce

There’s nothing I love more than a surprise when it comes to food and wine pairing and I would not in a million years have predicted that a pukka Bordeaux would go with this exotic Turkish dish.

I - and probably you - would more commonly stick to classics like roast beef and lamb with a bottle of Chateau Labégorce Zédé Margaux 2005 but untroubled by convention my friend had cooked an intriguing dish of chicken with a thick walnut sauce. It was the rich earthiness and slight bitterness of the walnuts that set the wine off to perfection. It became even more velvety and plummy - an absolute treat.

She didn’t have a recipe - she’d more or less made it up - but I’m thinking it’s probably quite like this recipe from Sabrina Ghayour. Anyway I’m going to try it. The only thing you’d need to be careful about is the kind of sides you put with it. We had simply cooked vegetables from the garden which I think assisted the match rather than exotic Turkish vegetable dishes and salads

Sadly the wine no longer exists. The estate decided not to bottle it separately from 2009 according to this report from Decanter but there seem to be a fair few old vintages knocking around if you can find them at fine wine retailers such as Crump. Richmond and Shaw (and I suspect traditional country wine merchants)

Goosnargh duck and elderberries with a Canary Islands red

Visiting two gastronomic restaurants that offered food and wine pairing in the Lake District last week (Forest Side and Hipping Hall) I’m struggling to pick out the stand-out match but I think it has to be the fabulous combination of the local Goosnargh duck with a wine I hadn’t tried before - the 2015 Tajinaste Valle de la Orotava from Tenerife that was served as part of the tasting menu at Hipping Hall.

The duck - which was fabulously tender - was simply served with elderberries and hay-baked turnip, the elderberries being the dominant note which chimed in with the lively peppery wine. The wine comes from an estate of the same name (Tajinaste is an indigenous flower), some of whose vineyards go back to 1914. It’s made from the local Listan Negro and retails at £15.99 from Hay Wines.

Other matches I was struck by were a white Dao with a dish of warm smoked beets and sheeps’ curd, and a delicate English white, Limney, from Davenport Vineyards with a dish of glazed monkfish and grilled cos. (Forest Side paired beetroot with an exotic Xinomavro rose from Domaine Ligas in Pella Greece)

If you're into food and wine pairing these are terrific places to visit.

I stayed at Forest Side and Hipping Hall as a guest of the hotels.

Pumpkin ravioli and sparkling albarino

Having ended up unexpectedly in hospital last week I struggled a bit to find a match of the week. Water doesn’t make the most inspiring pairing for food although it (the food in hospital) isn't by any means as bad as it used to be. So I’ll tell you about the the dish I had before I was taken ill.

It was a guest lunch at The Seahorse in Dartmouth cooked by Angela Hartnett and featured one of her wonderful silky pastas - ravioli stuffed (I vaguely recall) with pumpkin and hazelnuts and scattered with lavish amounts of parmesan.

I wouldn’t say it was the perfect match with the glass of sparkling albarino I was drinking, an ultra-dry Albarino Brut Nature, from Mar de Frades which was probably designed to go with the antipasti but it was certainly good enough. I also loved the intelligent wine list which is divided up by price.

If you want to try Angela’s food - and you should - visit one of her Cafe Muranos in London in St James’s Street and Covent Garden. Or Murano itself though that's quite a bit more expensive.