Brill with oxtail and Domaine Tempier Bandol

About the most unlikely wine match you could imagine - a delicate fish with a 19 year old red wine - but it worked! Which shows you can always be surprised by food and wine pairing.

It was at Bell’s Diner in Bristol and a very bold surf’n’turf dish. The key to the match was the accompanying braised oxtail which was subtle enough not to overwhelm the fish but robust enough to call for a red rather than a white.

You wouldn’t want to drink even a mature wine like this with brill on its own or with much lighter accompaniments, obviously - or at least I wouldn’t. And a younger Bandol or mourvèdre would have certainly overwhelmed the dish, even with the oxtail.

I’ve written about this Domaine Tempier vintage before. It’s a favourite wine and when we had it at The Nobody Inn last summer we bought two extra bottles, one of which we demolished at this dinner. (We had the opportunity to bring our own wine).

A wine that can work with steak and ale pie AND with white fish. Now that is something!

Steak and ale pie and horseradish mash with Domaine Tempier Bandol 1994

The great thing about going to old country pubs is that they tend to have wines you can’t find anywhere else - or certainly not at the price. Like the bottle of Domaine Tempier Bandol 1994 we found at the Nobody Inn in Doddiscombleigh in Devon at the weekend.

Of course the Nobody has long had a reputation for an amazing winelist - which it still retains even though its much-admired landlord Nick Borst-Smith has moved on. This bottle, which must have dated from the Borst-Smith era was listed at an incredible £38* - a total bargain for a wine of that vintage and reputation. It was still wonderful, exotic, dark and plummy - not faded in the least.

What to order with it? Well I could have gone for a steak but the idea of a steak and ale pie with horseradish mash appealed even more. Normally I’d have gone for a beer with it but it proved absolutely brilliant with the slightly gamey notes of the wine. The rosemary in the gravy also did its bit.

One of the most memorable combinations I’ve tasted this year.

*and, fatally, £26.60 if you want to take away. So we bought another couple of bottles . . .

Tea-smoked duck with beetroot jelly and Bandol

We may have got rid of the old convention of white wine with fish and red wine with meat but you’d still expect to drink a light wine with a starter and a more robust wine with your main course, non? Well not when it’s tea-smoked duck as I discovered at a great meal at one of our local Bristol restaurants, Riverstation in Bristol last week.

We’d been having a tasting with Jason Yapp of Yapp Brothers so had a fair number of bottles on the table to play with. The Bandol, a dense, rich, plummy Mas de la Rouvière 2007 from Domaine Bunan, didn’t look the most likely candidate but once I’d tasted the dish which had a really smokey edge I knew i had to try it.

It went brilliantly which goes to show if you want to drink Bandol right through a meal start with tea-smoked duck - or perhaps other smoked meats like venison. The slightly earthy taste of the beetroot helped too. (I’ll try and prise the recipe out of them.)

Apologies for not posting a pic of the dish. It wasn't my starter but my husband’s and as he was down the other end of the table he’d eaten most of it by the time I’d got to it.

The Bandol is £17.25 a bottle, btw. Expensive but worth it. It would be fantastic with a barbecued butterflied leg of lamb too.