Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Venerable wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd went for a combination of the second and third strategies - choosing for Burgundy specialist Jasper Morris’s leaving lunch a light summery starter of raw scallops with cucumber, radish and apple salad that wasn’t the obvious match for some simply thrilling white burgundies. But obviously nobody cared - it was an incredible treat to get to taste such wines.

The wine that ‘did’ hit the spot was an oak-aged 2014 Dog Point Section 94 sauvignon blanc* from Marlborough in New Zealand, very much in its prime, which absolutely sang with the scallops but would you turn your nose up at a 2004 Meursault or Montrachet? I suggest, dear reader, you would not.

The other standout combination rather than standout wines (they were all spectacular) were the two reds that were served with the cheese course of Montgomery cheddar, Tunworth and Cote Hill Blue (a blue brie from Lincolnshire) - a 2003 Vega Sicilia Unico and a 1997 Ridge Monte Bello. Great choice of cheeses - none were too strong or stinky and both reds were mellow and mature enough for their tannins not to create problems with the cheese - which can be the case with younger wines

The main course of lamb with grilled Provençal vegetables and an olive crumb worked predictably well with two grand cru Charmes Chambertins - a 2010 from Olivier Bernstein and a 2000 from Denis Bachelet and a 1999 Volnay Santenots-du-Milieu from Domaines des Comtes Lafon (in magnum)

And I should confess that we drank 2001 Chateau d’Yquem with the dessert - a lemon tart with orange carpaccio and lime (and maybe coconut) tuile

I doubt if any of us - including the Berry’s team - got a great deal of work done that afternoon ....

* which you can currently buy on special offer at £18.95 from Hennings and £19 from The Wine Society.

I ate at Berry Bros as their guest.

Krug Grande Cuvée and brioche

It’s not every week you spend the best part of the day drinking Krug (on and off) so what else could I choose as this week’s match of the week?

For the most part the pairings were predictable - luxury ingredients such as caviar, truffles, lobster (very, very good with Krug rosé) and rather too much foie gras* - but the ones that intrigued me were the less obvious ones.

Barbecue for a start - a preview of the Krug festival** at the end of July - and it actually goes surprisingly well with grilled lamb chops and corn but the top match for me were the slices of brioche we were served when we were tasting Krug Grande Cuvée earlier in the day which offset its richness perfectly without drawing attention to itself. SO much more interesting than a water biscuit ...

It made me think how sublime it would be to crack open a bottle of Krug over breakfast with a freshly baked brioche loaf some good butter and maybe a smear of home-made apricot jam. And/or a fresh peach. Gotta be tried.

* Yes I know I took a decision a while ago not to eat it but it was almost forced upon me and I wanted to see how it would match. The interesting thing is that it doesn’t hold the lure it once did. A bit like when you stop taking sugar in your coffee, then accidentally sip some with sugar in and find it cloyingly sweet. Foie gras just seems really fatty to me. Even with Krug.

** The festival takes place at The Grange in Hampshire … There is live music, there is food (top Argentinian chef Francis Mallmann is in the kitchen) and there is (obviously) Krug. Tickets are *cough* £395 a head (or £750 for two). But they do lay on a bus to take you home. Probably prostrate.

I travelled to and stayed in Reims as a guest of Krug.

Photo © Sokarys @fotolia.com

Fish curry and Gruner Veltliner

Last week I hosted a tasting for Bristol-based spice company The Spicery in which we explored a number of different wine pairings for different styles of curry - including an Indian Shiraz!

Fortunately most of the pairings worked the way I'd hoped they would but although we didn’t take a vote on it I think the one people enjoyed most was the Bengali mustard fish with a 2015 Felsner Mooseburgerin Gruner Veltliner (£11.99 from Waitrose)

You would expect a white wine to be the best choice with a fish curry of course and the level of heat was actually quite mild which didn’t present the wine with too many challenges but the grüner was just perfect with enough peppery character of its own to stand up to the spicing but not so much as to overwhelm it.

It is, I’ve remarked before, a super-flexible wine and a reliable choice to turn to when you’re confronted with spicy (but not outrageously hot) food.

For other good grüner veltliner pairings see

The best food pairings with grüner veltliner

* The image above is not the dish on the evening which was just a mini course but a similar Bengali fish curry © mitrarudra @fotolia.com

Lobster and Condrieu

The advantage of having chefs and wine merchants as friends is that you don't really need to go to restaurants*.

Last week my chef friend Chris cooked a lobster* and my wine merchant mate Raj brought along a Condrieu to drink with it. The combination was so brilliant I can’t think why I hadn’t thought of it before (probably because there are so many other delicious things to drink with lobster)

The lobster was simply cooked and served with a homemade aioli (garlic mayonnaise). Top tip - bring a pan of water to the boil, drop the lobster in it, put a lid on the pan, switch off the heat and leave for half an hour or so. Unfortunately live lobsters taste a great deal better than pre-cooked and chilled ones.

The Condrieu was a 2014 Les Terrasses du Palat from Francois Villard, a producer I visited a couple of years ago and was just dazzling, managing to combine an seductive richness with a pure mineral edge. You can buy it by the case from Raj’s R S Wines for £40 a bottle (though I think he’s now on to the 2015) or by the individual bottle from the Oxford Wine Company.

Which is pricey, but just think what it would cost in a restaurant ....

*not that it stops me. I mean I can't eat at theirs all the time 😉