Fish tacos and Clare Valley riesling

Last week I pushed the envelope a bit further with wine and spice pairing with a Wine and Chilli dinner at The Spicery in Bristol

This is a really great little company which sells spices tailor-made to a specific recipe so you don’t have to buy more than you need and don’t get left with musty spices that have no taste (mea culpa). You can set up a monthly subscription which would make a great Christmas present for a keen cook.

Their development chef Matt Williamson (ex Flinty Red for the benefit of fellow Bristolians) devised a brilliant menu which took us through a whole variety of chillies (including some ancho chilli-spiked chocolate brownies) which I matched with a range of different wines.

The most popular pairing was a zingy 2015 Baily & Baily Clare Valley riesling (which is currently selling for a bargainous £6.49 at Waitrose) with a fish taco with a fruity aji amarillo sauce. It was just like having an extra squeeze of lime with the dish - a style of wine well worth thinking about for other fresh-tasting Mexican dishes.

Incidentally The Spicery is having an open day on Saturday December 10th if you’re in or around Bristol and want to go along and see what they do.

If you’d be interested in having me host an event for you do get in touch at fiona@matchingfoodandwine.com.

Practically every barbecued meat you can think of and an amazing Aussie grenache

Normally my matches of the week are quite specific - a dish and a drink - but it’s always great to find a wine that sails through everything on the table as this gorgeous grenache did at London’s latest barbecue restaurant Temper last week.

It was the Jauma Like Raindrops from the McLaren Vale in South Australia, recommended by their sommelier Donald Edwards and it took absolutely every dish in its stride from some intensely smokey beef to an outrageously good side of beef fat potatoes with raclette. Not to mention the sides of ‘MSG’ ketchup, green sauce and pork, habanero and pickled onion ‘sprinkle’, a battery of flavours for any wine to contend with.

The grapes which come from three different vineyards are organically grown and made without any chemical additions including sulphur which gives the wine a particularly pure, vibrant character. It’s a natural wine but a totally unscary one - just soft, ripe, gorgeous and delicious. There’s a good description of the winery from their American importer Vine Street Imports here.

You can see my article on how you can now drink fine wines in barbecue restaurants on the Decanter website.

I ate at Temper as a guest of the restaurant.

Seabass crudo, Felsina olive oil and Meriggio sauvignon blanc

Given that I’m not a massive sauvignon fan it might surprise you that it features as my match of the week for the second successive week but it’s a question of quality. With the right dish good sauvignon is a joy.

In this case it was a starter of raw sea bass which was drizzled with Chianti producer Felsina’s 2016 olive oil and seasoned with marjoram, lemon and sea salt. And it will probably surprise you less that it was served at The River Café as part of an amazing olive oil tasting and lunch hosted by David Gleave of Liberty Wines.

Although the sea bass, herbs and salt played their part it was really the gorgeous grassy olive oil that showed off the wine, echoing its own herbal notes but bringing out its elegant citrus character as well.

These Tuscan producers only make their oils in very small quantities so you need to reserve them just as you would an in-demand wine. In the UK The Oil Merchant is a reliable source but good Italian delis, department store food halls and larger, posher supermarkets such as Waitrose should stock them in due course too. (Just make sure it's the 2016 vintage you're buying). They won't be cheap but they raise humble ingredients such as tomatoes, good bread and pasta to spectacular heights.

The best price I can find online for the Meriggio which is made by Fontodi, is £16.50 at winedirect.co.uk. Which is roughly the price you'd pay for a good Sancerre.

I attended the tasting and lunch as a guest of Liberty Wines.

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.