My 20 best wine (and other drink) pairings of 2015

As you may know if you visit the site regularly I do a regular match of the week - generally a less obvious pairing I’ve come across that has surprised me as much as it may have surprised you. So which were the best ones that would be worth looking out for or repeating? Here’s my top 20.

Crispy chilli lime squid with edamame bean and coriander salad and pinot gris

January 2015 found me in New Zealand, falling in love with pinot gris rather than the ubiquitous sauvignon blanc. This one came from Brick Bay Winery in Matakana but I tasted some other great wines along the road.

Venison tartare with Mountford’s The Rise Pinot Noir

Also from New Zealand and one of the highlights of the trip a forage and dinner with the winemakers of North Canterbury. Raw venison and aged pinot is an amazing combination

Blood orange and chocolate with Highland Park 12

You don’t often think of pairing a pudding with whisky - at least I don’t - but at L Mulligan Grocer in Dublin they do it all the time. The dish - a combination of candied slices of blood orange, a very short, crumbly ‘double’ chocolate shortcake, dark chocolate mousse, bitter orange purée, oatmeal praline and sea salt caramel was more complicated than it sounded from the menu description but spot on with the Highland Park 12

Frozen milk chocolate and raspberry cake with Rosa Regale Brachetto d’Acqui

And another terrific dessert pairing from the events I was hosting in Dublin for Febvre (I’m there again this February, dates tbc). An ideal wine for a milk chocolate dessert it picked up and bounced off the fresh raspberries

Gorgonzola dolce and La Stoppa Ageno 2005

A surprising combination for a French restaurant but Le Baratin in Paris, which has a largely natural wine list is a rule unto itself. I had a bit of a thing about orange wines last year. This was one of the best.

Asparagus with poached egg, watercress sabayon and Chateau Doisy-Daëne sec

Not a predictable match (to me at least) but a stellar one from wine auction house Bonhams which really showed off a great white Bordeaux. Reminds me to go back there.

Navarin of lamb and Chateau des Estanilles Faugères 2002

Not all my top pairings come from smart restaurants - here’s one from our home in the Languedoc when an old bottle of Faugères hit it off perfectly with a delicate spring stew.

Vermentino and seafood

A bit of a broad brush match but practically everything we ate that was fishy during the Porto Cervo wine festival in Sardinia back in May tasted wonderful with the local Vermentino. (OK, the sun undoubtedly helped!)

Moscato d’Asti and rose macarons

Another standout pairing from a champagne and sparkling wine event I was hosting with cookery writer Thane Prince. Macarons and moscato - who knew? Try it!

Sushi and Sancerre Rouge

I remember someone telling me that red burgundy was great with sushi but remained sceptical until I tried this great combination prepared by sommelier Juli Nakata-Roumet in the Loire this summer. (The wine was a 2012 from Dominique Roger of Domaine du Carrou)

Gosnells Mead and honey-smoked chicken

The much heralded mead revival still struggles to take off but I absolutely loved this combination with honey-smoked chicken at the Manor in Clapham

Bread and butter pudding with apricots and Passito di Pantelleria

Bread and butter pudding is one of the best foils for a good dessert wine especially when It’s as good as this version from chef Paul Heathcote making a guest appearance at the Belmond Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons

Prawn curry with saffron lassi

There are endless debates about whether wine does or doesn’t go with curry but if you’re looking for a non-alcoholic alternative a good answer is a saffron lassi as I discovered at Asma Khan’s Darjeeling Express pop-up

Celtic Promise and cider brandy

You can never have too many good drink pairings for cheese - and often, I find, they’re not wine, as in the case of this 3 year old Somerset Royal cider brandy that hit it off perfectly with the washed rind Celtic Promise.

Apricot tart and Louis Roederer Carte Blanche

It’s easy to overlook sweeter champagnes but they can be the most perfect foil to a simple dessert as I discovered on this visit to Louis Roederer in early September

Tandoori grouse with an Indian 'Super-Tuscan'
Heavily spiced grouse with a full-bodied Indian blend of cabernet and sangiovese? I'd have said it would never work but the team at Trishna proved it could and it did. Never say never!

Glazed bacon ribs and Meursault

Actually it wasn’t so much the ribs but the wickedly creamy parsley sauce that went with them that made the match (repeated the other day, equally successfully with a Margaret River chardonnay).

Mushroom soup and Rignes Polaris Roykbokk

You might think if you’d read this far that I wasn’t a beer drinker but no wine could have bettered this dark, smoky savoury Norwegian bock at To Rom og Kjøkken in Trondheim

Vidal ice wine with feta and honey cheesecake

This certainly vies for the top pairing of the year - maybe the perfect answer to that tricky question of what to drink with cheesecake. One of the highlights of our second Sunday wine club event at Honey & Co.

and finally, roast turkey and Mencia

My new favourite pairing for turkey - hot or cold!

Roast turkey and Mencia

By now you might think I’d have explored all possible permutations with turkey but sommelier Jacob Kocemba was singing the praises of Mencia with turkey on Twitter the other day and as we had a magnum handy I thought I’d give it a try.

It was, admittedly a particularly good one - the Petalos Bierzo from Alvaro Palacios under the Descendientes de J Palacios label - in magnum which had more richness and depth than some younger mencias but stood up magnificently to the bird and all the trimmings - and to the cold turkey the following day. Majestic has the 2012/13 vintages on offer at a very competitive £13.86 a standard bottle at the moment if you buy any six bottles. It’s normally around £18.

Coq au riesling and Alsace riesling

One category of wine pairings that pretty well always works are ‘terroir-based’ matches - in other words wine and food combinations that have grown up with each other - and this week’s is one of those.

The dish was on offer at the newly opened Bellanger in Islington, which has a menu with a distinctly Alsatian twist (as in hailing from Alsace rather than dog-themed, obviously) You can order it for one, two or four - an extravagant touch which I rather enjoyed. We indulgently accompanied it with pommes aligot, an outrageously rich potato purée.

Choosing a wine to go with it was a bit of a no-brainer. It had to be Alsace riesling - a half bottle of Les Fossiles 2014 from Mittnacht Frères, as we were drinking quite modestly. It matched it quite perfectly - sometimes it pays not to reinvent the wheel.

Bellanger by the way is a delight - a typical Corbin & King restaurant: wood-panelled. flatteringly lit and super-glamourous. If you like their other restaurants (The Wolseley, The Delaunay, Fischer’s et al) you'll adore it. It is comparatively pricey for Islington, though. It will be interesting to see how they get on though my friend Thane looks like she may keep it in business single-handedly.

Dry German riesling and cured salmon

Cured - or marinated - salmon is something you’ll find on a lot of menus these days but what’s the best wine to drink with it?

I hit on a great match at an excellent new pop-up wine bar called Corkage in Bath last week with a bottle of 2013 Weingut Winter Riesling from the Rheinhessen. At 12.5% it’s higher in alcohol than many German rieslings so dry and powerful enough to handle the cure without losing its own crisp citrus and passionfruit character. (It also went well with another starter of crab and egg on toast.)

I liked Corkage which is up the far end of Walcot Street if you’re wondering. It’s got a small but well-chosen selection of wines, some of which they import directly, a short menu of well-priced food, and it's really cosy and friendly. They’re there at the moment for 3 months - hopefully they’ll stay longer.

You can also buy the riesling to take away from Corkage. It's also stocked by Bottle Apostle at £12.60, £13 from the Good Wine Shop and £13.99 from the Oxford Wine Company.