Milk-fed lamb with Bolgheri Coronato 2011

Last week was a bumper week for wine pairing but setting aside the matches with older vintages of Pazo Senorans albarino at El Celler de Can Roca which were so mind-blowing they deserve a longer post, this is the one that stood out.

Lamb and red wine is admittedly a bit of a no-brainer but when it’s executed as well as this dish at Marianne in Notting Hill and paired as cleverly as it was by wine writer and consultant Douglas Blyde it’s worth calling out.

The lamb which was from the Rhug estate in Wales was served both very rare (the loin) with asparagus and morels and as a shepherds pie on the side (the shoulder) but I think it was the sweet carrot purée that made the match with the lusciously rich wine such a success. Although when you have a wine as sexy as this you have to chose something really inappropriate not to enjoy it.

The wine, a 2011 Bolgheri Coronato, was a blend of merlot, cabernet sauvignon and cabernet franc - what used to be known as a super-Tuscan though Bolgheri has for several years been recognised as a separate denomination. Apparently Ludovico Antinori has stopped making it which seems a crying shame though I spotted there are a few bottles of the 2010 left on the Lay & Wheeler site at the time of writing (quoted in bond, note, but still only £14.50 which seems a bit of a steal.)

Maybe that was the problem. Too good a wine for the price.

Caesar salad with a Godello based Spanish white

A lot of the time when we’re eating out we’re not matching dishes exactly - we simply buy a bottle we like the sound of and hope it will cope with everything we throw at it.

That happened last week with a delicious Spanish white called Pazo de Mariñan, a blend of Godello, Teixadura and Albarino from the Monterrei region of north west Spain.

Maybe not the first bottle you would think of ordering in an Italian restaurant but you know what? It sailed through quite a tricky series of dishes including this Caesar salad which was made with fresh anchovies (boquerones) rather than salted ones and a richly-flavoured pasta dish of nduja (spicy Calabrian sausage) and mascarpone which I think might have defeated a lesser wine. You can buy it from Village Wines of Bexley in Kent for a very reasonable £8.98 a bottle.

The restaurant is one of my new favourites in Bristol, Pasta Loco, which does a brilliant set lunch for just £12.50 for two courses. Rude not to order a decent bottle of wine, then.

By the way you’ll need to book. It’s deservedly popular.

For other pairings for Caesar salad see

The best wine pairings with Caesar salad

Peas and pinot

Having been flying around the world for the best part of the past month I had a quiet week at home last week which (unusually for me) involved no outstanding drinks pairings.

So I thought I’d revert to a favourite that to enjoy at this time of year - fresh peas and pinot noir

I’m not sure why it works so well but if you serve peas with almost any dish it enhances the match with pinot. The sweetness picks up on the complementary sweetness of many pinot noirs - especially youthful fruity new world pinots such as those from New Zealand but I think there’s also an underlying umami thing going on - cooked peas in particular are umami-rich.

So I’m not sure whether it’s the duck or the peas in that classic combination that makes the match with pinot work so well but the two together? Heaven!

Photo © almaje @fotolia.com

Spiced whitebait with sriracha and Chinon rosé

As you’d expect many of the usual suspects featured in my pairings this weekend (chocolate, anyone*?) but the match I was most impressed by was nothing to do with Easter

It was an amuse or pre-dinner ‘snack’ as we must now call them of spicy deep-fried whitebait at Box-E, a local Bristol restaurant I impulsively popped into for a dish on Saturday in order to check out a rosé we'd been chatting about on Twitter. (As you do ...)

The wine was a delicious dark salmon-coloured Chinon rosé called Le Chic from Johann Spelty that tasted almost like roasted rhubarb but it easily took the whitebait which came with a wedge of charred lime and a dab of sriracha (hot chilli sauce) in its stride. Disproving the theory that oily fish and chilli are impossible to match with wine.

Box E got an enthusiastic review from the Observer’s Jay Rayner this week which given it only has 14 seats will make it even more difficult to into but it’s worth persisting. Elliot Lidstone’s imaginative food makes it one of my current favourites on the Bristol food scene.

*gratuitous excuse for a plug for my new ebook 101 Great Ways to enjoy Chocolate and Wine (and other delicious drinks) which is now available for download at the introductory price of £3 until April 30th, 2017. I hope you'll agree that's a bargain!