Match of the week
White fish in cream sauce and Alsace Riesling
It’s hard to pick out the best match from my trip to Alsace last week but I think it has to go to this classic combination you find in every traditional restaurant.
I admit it doesn’t sound that appetising - and the fish does have to be super-fresh for it to work. The best example was in a traditional family-runn inn in Itterswiller called the Vieux Pressoir - a perfectly fried fillet of zander served with freshly made noodles and a light cream sauce which made you wonder why you don’t serve fish like this more often. In other restaurants it’s often served with choucroute (sauerkraut) and plain boiled potatoes.
Both go brilliantly well with a crisp dry Riesling, preferably from a Grand Cru (although the classification of Alsatian wines is appallingly complicated, so don’t get overly stressed about that). It would also work with simply cooked chicken in a creamy sauce. Cream may have fallen out of favour in recent years but Riesling just loves it.
I’ll be writing more about pairing Alsace wines in a couple of days.
Macaroni cheese and Alsace Riesling
As those of you who follow me on Twitter (as winematcher) will know I’ve been in New York this week and have a huge number of interesting wine and other matches to tell you about but the most unexpectedly successful - and therefore my pairing of the week - was a match of macaroni cheese and Alsace Riesling.
My normal preferred pairing with mac and cheese as it’s called over the pond is a buttery Chardonnay or a soft red like a St-Emilion but this Riesling, suggested by the sommelier John Tarleton at Artisanal, was like eating it with a crisp juicy apple (an odd idea but you’ll have to trust me, it works!)
It has to be said the macaroni cheese was creamy rather than tremendously cheesy and the Riesling a good bottle: the 2006 Les Princes Abbs from Schlumberger which is available from Henderson Wines in the UK - and I’m sure from other independent merchants - at about £13 a bottle. Their website also recommends it with pan-fried scampi.
Artisanal, which is a cheese-focussed brasserie, was opened 8 years ago by one of New York’s best known chefs Terrance Brennan. It also offers cheese and wine flights.
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