Roast goose with Nebbiolo

As a chef friend who recently took over a farm had some geese to get rid of we had goose for our main Christmas meal this year - stuffed somewhat improbably with hay (long story. Not such a good idea!)

We picked out a bottle we’d recently bought from another friend Marc Millon who runs a small wine business called Vino importing Italian wines from small growers. It was a 2005 Langhe Nebbiolo from Cascina Fontana, a Barolo producer with whom they’ve been dealing for years. You can read more about them here
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It was just perfect with the goose, having the acidity to cut through the fat and a lovely dark, damsony flavour - still fruity enough at 4 years old to take on the accompanying red cabbage but not so intense as to overwhelm an already full-flavoured plateful. It also went very well with the pork and fennel rillettes for which I posted a recipe the other day.

I don’t know how Vino’s stocks of the 2005 stand but the 2007 vintage is currently selling in Berry Bros & Rudd for £20, quite a bit cheaper than the £33.50 you would pay for the Fontana's Barolo.

Fonduta with truffles and Nebbiolo

The last few days I’ve been eating and drinking my way around Piedmont - the perfect time of year as the region’s fabled white truffles are in season.

Generally they are served as simply as possible so as not to disguise their heady, exotic flavour - the two most common ways are shaving them over a rich egg pasta called tajarin or serving them with eggs but I had a really wonderful dish at the one Michelin-starred restaurant La Ciau del Tornavento just outside Alba which showed them off to perfection.

The base was cardoons (cardi), a celery-like vegetable with a faintly artichoke-like taste which is very popular in the region, topped with a rich fonduta (fondue) of Taleggio and the local Castelmagno cheese. Truffles were shaved lavishly over the top.

Normally you’d think of drinking white wine with fondue but here they pretty well always serve it - and truffles - with some kind of Nebbiolo such as Barolo, Barbaresco or, the wine we enjoyed with it, the less-well known Roero (my companion, who lived in the Roero area picked a 2001 Roche d’Ampsej from Matteo Correggia).

What makes the match work is the marked acidity of these wines, the absence of intrusive tannins and the cool room temperature - 17° - 18° C, I would guess - at which they typically serve them (The standard of wine service in the region is outstanding.)

I’ve also had a few other thoughts on matching wine with truffles so I’ll be posting those shortly.