Wigmore cheese and 13 year old Pouilly Fumé

It’s still not widely recognised that white wines have the capacity to age, particularly wines that are noted for their freshness and bright acidity so it was fascinating to try a range of older wines from the Centre-Loire yesterday with a range of different cheeses.

The combination which stood out for me was a 2003 Pouilly Fumé Prestige from Domaine du Bouchot* which had developed a lush, tropical, passionfruit character you’d have more readily associated with a New Zealand sauvignon blanc - astonishing for a wine of this age (13 years old).

The cheese I thought it worked best with it was not a goats cheese a well matured Wigmore, a Camembert-style sheeps cheese. It was served with a drizzle of honey which picked up on the ripeness of the wine. (2003 if you remember was a very warm vintage)

Goats cheese would have been the more usual pairing with wines from this region so it was interesting to discover that a sheep cheese worked well too. Conversely one of the specialist cheese sites cheese.com says that Wigmore goes well with Cabernet Merlot. I’m not sure that would be my first port of call (if I wanted a red I’d probably go for a pinot noir) but would be interesting to try it out.

* You can buy a 2015 Domaine du Bouchot Pouilly Fumé from Ocado for £13.49 instead of £17.99 until midnight tomorrow GMT. Not the same cuvée but might be worth a whirl.

I was hosting the event at Bell's Diner in Bristol for Les Vins du Centre Loire.

Miso-marinated pork belly and Karasi Sour cocktail

Sometimes I wonder what pork belly doesn’t pair with. It seems to be delicious with so many drinks but even so It’s always intriguing to find a new match.

This was at a brilliant event called Street Food Jam at the Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival which I was lucky enough to attend last weekend where eight bars paired a dish with a matching cocktail.

They were all pretty impressive but this Japanese-inspired pairing which came from the team at Zuma was spot on. The pork was quite simply prepared, marinated with miso and grilled over charcoal and was perfectly offset by the citrussy sour which contained Bulleit bourbon, karasi* syrup, honey, yuzu, egg white and mirin - in other words a sour with a Japanese twist.

We also really liked an unusual panna cotta made from barley, gingko and yuba milk from Jerry Maguire which was paired with a highly complicated but wickedly creamy, gingery concoction of purple sweet potato, crème brûlée, ron zacapa 23, Canton ginger liqueur, ginger peel, lemon juice, egg white and osmanthus (peach flavoured flower) syrup. Maybe not one to try at home ...

Incidentally Zuma is launching what must be one of the world’s most lavish brunches in collaboration with Louis Roederer this weekend: a Cristal brunch for 1888HK$ (or £199/$243). For that you get ‘freeflow’ (i.e. unlimited) Cristal 2009, beluga caviar, lobster, Wagyu beef and white chocolate with alba truffle. Eye-wateringly expensive but a bottle of Cristal on its own could apparently cost you that in Hong Kong. (They do a more modestly priced brunch with Louis Roederer Premier Brut at HK$650 for those of you who whose wallets don't quite stretch to Cristal!)

There are other events in Hong Kong all the rest of this month. Check out the Great November Feast if you're visiting.

* Karasi is actually a Turkish red wine but I’m wondering whether that's what they used. Seems unlikely in Hong Kong but you never know. I’ll tell you when I find out!

See 5 other good matches for pork belly

I travelled to Hong Kong as a guest of the Hong Kong Tourist Board.

Pizzocheri and Valtellina

A slightly obscure pairing this week from the Lombardy region of Italy, the focus for an absolutely brilliant pop-up supper I went to at Wild Artichokes in Kingsbridge last Friday.

It was based on authentic recipes that had been painstakingly researched and assembled by food writer Christine Smallwood in her brilliant book An Appetite for Lombardy and cooked by Jane Baxter, ex River Café, former head chef of the nearby Riverford Kitchen and, most recently, author of Happy Salads.

Practically everything was different from the dishes you’d find in a restaurant. The courgette fritters for example, contained crushed amaretti and this ribsticking dish of buckwheat pasta, potato, cabbage and cheese is not one I’d ever come across before.

Largely because of the cabbage it paired perfectly with a light Valtellina red from the same region, one of those Italian reds that behaves like a white wine with food. Christine had brought along a bottle of Mamete Prevostini Santa Rita, Rosso di Valtellina which is 100% nebbiolo (known locally as Chiavennasca) and which costs around £18 from Kingsbridge Wine Rooms and online from Food & Fine Wine.

The recipe, which comes from Anna Bertola of Trattoria Altavilla in Bianzone tells you how to make the pasta from scratch but Christine says you can buy it dried at a good Italian deli like Lina Stores in Soho. Sounds like the perfect dish for a dark, wet, end-of-October night.

Although Wild Artichokes is not a restaurant in the conventional sense it hosts regular lunches, dinners and special events so it’s well worth checking their website or getting on their mailing list if you’re staying in the South Devon area.

Paté en croute and mature Saint Estèphe

Having spent two days in the company of the most high profile advocates of the art of food and wine pairing in France, the Gardinier brothers of Taillevent, I have more outstanding wine matches than I know what to do with this week

But I’m plumping for this one just because it’s an unusual idea to start the meal with a full-bodied red Bordeaux.

The meal was in fact at the more casual offshoot of the restaurant, 110 de Taillevent, whose USP is that it pairs every dish with four alternative wines, ranging from 5€ to 22€ a glass. The paté en croute, a real old-style piece of French charcuterie that apparently takes two days to make, is a staple of both the Paris and London branch.

In Paris it’s paired with one white and two reds, a 2014 Jumilla (no, the wines aren’t all French!), a 2012 white Saint Joseph, a 2010 Moulin-a-Vent and a 2009 Pauillac from Chateau Latour. But because the brothers also own Phélan Ségur in Saint Estèphe and wanted to show the 2008 with it that’s what we had.

And it was just lovely - very smooth, plummy and elegant - and not so overpowering that you couldn’t follow it with another wine, even a white. That owes a lot to the fact that it was a relatively mature vintage, as indeed are many wines on the list. The Gardiniers have their own vast cellar just outside Paris where they age all their wines. (Fascinating. More on this to follow)

It even took the accompanying cornichons in its stride which was quite a feat!

I ate at 110 de Taillevent as a guest of the restaurant.