Saint-Nectaire with Domaine Matassa Cuvée Alexandria 2012, Côtes Catalanes

While orange wines are becoming more common I’m still not sure most people know when and with what to drink them so here’s a pairing that worked really well from a dinner I hosted for Bar Buvette, one of my favourite Bristol haunts, last week.

The wine (which gets its colour from leaving the grape juice in contact with the skins, not from actual oranges) came from Domaine Matassa in the Roussillon and is made from Muscat of Alexandria, hence the name. The estate is run organically and biodynamically so it’s very much a natural wine though with an exotic taste of grapes and quince (so delicous and not scary at all).

I have to hand it to the bar’s owner Peter Taylor for suggesting we drink it with the cheese - I’d have probably gone for the main course of lamb which also tends to work well with orange wine (think lamb and quince) but it was a real winner with the aged Saint-Nectaire.

You can buy it for £20 from Les Caves de Pyrène though I suspect other orange wines would work well too.

See these other good pairings for Saint-Nectaire

Pike and crayfish pithivier with white burgundy

If you’re looking for a match for a serious white burgundy you couldn’t do better than this elaborate pike and crayfish pie or tourte de brochet, bisque écrevisse as they billed it at the Château de Montreuil last week.

It was basically a pastry-filled version of the French classic quenelles de brochet, sauce Nantua but even more delicious as the pike and crayfish were not pulverised into a mousse. The kind of food that reminds you just how dazzling top French cooking can be.

It was actually paired with a 2012 Chateau de Tracy 101 Pouilly Fumé but I personally thought went better with the 2013 Olivier Leflaive rich, creamy Oncle Vincent that came from the Wine Society’s fine wine stocks in Montreuil. (We were hosted by the Society). The wine comes from older burgundy vines that are grown just outside the Puligny Montrachet appellation.

The Society sells the current 2014 vintage for a very reasonable £15.50 though if you wanted to pick it up from the Montreuil showroom you’d have to order it a minimum 8 days in advance. (And you’d better take advantage on your next trip. This week they announced they were closing their showroom at the end of the year.)

Artichoke barigoule and grüner veltliner

So maybe Austria’s signature grape grüner veltliner is the perfect pairing for tricky-to-match artichokes?

I’ve suggested it as a good option before in this post on matching wine and artichokes and last week’s experience of trying the two together at Bristol restaurant No Man’s Grace has confirmed my view.

The occasion was the fourth dinner in a series organised by local cookbook club Eat Your Words where Bristol chefs cook a menu from one of their favourite cookbooks. John Watson of No Man’s Grace was ambitiously tackling The French Laundry Cookbook and opted to serve the very French barigoule - a dish of braised artichokes with onions, carrots and fennel - with a crisp 2014 Austrian grüner veltliner from Hopler (available at James Nicholson) which really stood up to it surprisingly well.

The restaurant is also noted for its desserts and served two as part of the dinner: a strawberry shortbread with a 2011 I Capetelli, a late harvest Garganega from Soave producer Anselmi (winedirect.co.uk) and a divinely light lemon sabayon pine nut tart with honeyed mascarpone with a 2013 Late Harvest Tokaji Katinka from Patricius (Hic wine merchants). Both were great matches but I actually preferred the fresher, sharper Capetelli with the tart.

Lotus root stir-fry and chrysanthemum tea

It seems invidious to pick out just one wine pairing from my visit to the Okanagan valley last week (of which more in due course) so I’m going for the first drink I had on my arrival: chrysanthemum tea at a brilliant Chinese restaurant called Chef Tony in Richmond, the town just next door to Vancouver.

According to local food and wine writer Stephanie Yuen who took me there it’s the perfect antidote to jetlag, a cooling tea that’s easy to digest and a recognised pick-me-up (And definitely preferable to alcohol at what would have been the equivalent of 4am back home!)

It also happened to be a refreshing pairing for the homestyle dishes that Stephanie picked from the menu, particularly this fresh-tasting stir fry of lotus root, mangetout, and mushrooms though it also went well with peashoots, a deeply savoury chicken dish and a delicous pork belly and bean cake (which was like a savoury sausage patty).

Richmond is the heart of the Chinese community in BC (over 50% of its population are of Chinese origin) and apparently has well over 500 Chinese restaurants. Chef Tony is also a favourite of another Chinese food writer Lee Man - you can see his other recommendations here.