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

One of the courses at the food and wine workshops I hosted for Irish wine importer Febvre at Drury Buildings in Dublin last week was a frozen milk chocolate and raspberry cake - well, sort of cake. More like a cross between a cake and a mousse.

Chocolate is notoriously tricky with wine, frozen or rather semi-frozen chocolate even more so but I anticipated the raspberries would provide the key to the match.

We tried a rosato frizzante (in effect pink prosecco but we’re not allowed to call it that) but it was too dry. Then for the final workshop we tried a sweeter brachetto d’acqui, the Rosa Regale from Castello Banfi's Vigne Regale which hit the spot perfectly - echoing the raspberry flavour in the dessert in much the same way as a Belgian Frambozen (raspberry beer) would have done. Served in a flute looked very pretty too.

Interestingly the same wine didn’t work nearly as well with the very intense dark chocolate and toasted pistachio cake which was served at the dinner by which it was quite overwhelmed.

A good wine for summer though. Dante Cecchini of Castello Banfi reckons it’s also perfect for Eton mess.

You can buy the Rosa Regale in the UK for £12.89 from allaboutwine.co.uk (by the case) or £13.45 from slurp.co.uk

Blood orange and chocolate with Highland Park 12

It’s not often I come across such a good dessert pairing, let alone one with whisky but here’s a stellar one from L Mulligan Grocer in Dublin which offers whisky pairings with all its desserts

The one we chose was called simply 'blood orange and chocolate'. It was actually quite a complex and sophisticated 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.

The whisky they paired with it was a rich-tasting, spicy Highland Park 12 which you’d have thought would be way too strong for it but was actually spot on - one of those comparatively rare combinations where each element of the partnership - food and drink - enhances the other. The bitterness of the orange, I think, particularly helped bringing out a fruity, almost orangey element in the whisky.

It goes to show there’s more potential in pairing whisky with food than most imagine.

Seared tuna with sesame and 2013 Elephant Hill Syrah

My final meal in New Zealand last week was also one of the most impressive of my recent trip: lunch at the award-winning Elephant Hill winery in Hawkes Bay.

It’s a stunning building with a tasting area at the front and a large light restaurant at the back overlooking the vineyards. The food and plating too is spectacular - everything I ordered looked amazing.

I dithered over which course to highlight - the prawns and sauvignon blanc pairing of my first course was spot on too but decided to go for the more unusual match of seared tuna with syrah. I don’t think this means any syrah would work - Hawkes Bay syrah - especially young syrah like the Elephant Hill 2013* which is co-fermented with a small amount of viognier - has a particular spicy, peppery character reminiscent of the northern Rhone but with softer, riper fruit. You could even chill it lightly though they don’t seem to go in for chilling reds much in New Zealand. Frankly I’d expected their pinot (which comes from Central Otago) would be the star match but the syrah eclipsed it - maybe because the tuna was really rare - more like steak than fish.

The other wine I particularly liked from Elephant HIll which I think would make a fantastic match for Indian food is the 2013 Le Phant Blanc - an unusual just under 50/50 blend of pinot gris and viognier with a dash of gewurztraminer. Gymkhana in London is selling it by the glass.

*UK stockists such as 31 Dover which currently has it on offer for £14.99 or Winetrust 100 still seem to be on the 2010

Venison tartare with Mountford's The Rise 2009 pinot noir

As you can imagine I’ve been drinking a fair amount of pinot noir in New Zealand this week (it’s a hard life). In general Kiwis pair it with lamb for obvious reasons but the most striking match I came across was with a venison tartare at the North Canterbury forage, a fabulous event I’ll be writing more about in due course

The idea was to collect as many wild ingredients as possible then hand them over to a group of chefs to create a free feast paired with the local Waipara wines. Somewhere along the line someone had picked up a deer (I don’t think they actually managed to shoot it) and one of the chefs, Tom Hishon from Orphans Kitchen in Auckland used the heart and loin to make a tartare to which he added elderberries and served with a flaxseed cracker topped with the venison bone marrow.

We got the chance to taste some of the wineries' more mature pinots with it. The wine in my glass was a silky 2009 called The Rise from a winery called Mountford. I might have thought of pairing it with cooked or seared game but not with a tartare but both the dish and the match were sensational.

Incidentally the chefs cut wooden 'plates' to serve the dish from a handy tree. I suspect just as an excuse to use a chainsaw ....