Three surprisingly good pairings for sparkling wine

Last week I had three dishes that went unexpectedly well with sparkling wine - for slightly different reasons:

The first was a food and wine pairing exercise at Denbies Vineyard Hotel in Surrey where they paired their Cubitt blanc de noirs with baguette and Marmite butter which I can strongly recommend to Marmite addicts. Why did it work? The combination of the umami in the Marmite and the toasty fizz (which came from the 2013 vintage).

Then I had the most incredible dish of macaroni cacio e pepe (a cheese and pepper sauce) with deep-fried crispy chicken wings at Wild Honey St James. This was perhaps more predictable match as deep-fried foods generally go with fizz but the cheese added an extra dimension too. The wine was another English fizz - the Westwell Estate Pelegrin Brut.

And finally - this was an exceptionally good week, wasn’t it? - a cheese course at a game dinner at the Pony & Trap in Chew Magna which was essentially a giant gougère stuffed with Baron Bigod, a British Brie-type cheese with gooseberry purée and walnuts with an Etienne Fort Crémant de Limoux from Vinetrail who supplied the wines and devised the pairings. This was really quite bold as we’d just been drinking a substantial Rhône red - the Fréderic Agneray Mitan with the main course of pigeon. It was the pastry of the gougère - also crisp and cheesy - that made the match sing.

Champagne would, of course, have worked equally well with these dishes.

I ate as a guest of Denbies Vineyard Hotel and the Pony & Trap. Wild Honey St James gave me a complimentary glass of the Westwell though I paid for the rest of the meal.

Baron Bigod cheese and Sipsmith orange and cacao gin

I really didn’t know which match to choose from the spectacular 10th anniversary dinner which Sipsmith held in their distillery last week. Most of the pairings were cocktails (I also loved the combination of roast Iberico pork fillet with a Red Cat, an invention of master distiller Jared Brown’s*) but I’m going to go for the line-up of four cheeses which was paired with four different gins

The outstanding combination was Baron Bigod a luxurious Brie de Meaux style cheese from Suffolk with Sipsmith’s orange and cacao gin. It’s a gin I’d have run a mile from if I’d heard it described but was actually ridiculously good.

According to their website it’s distilled orange blossom, cacao nibs, vanilla, coffee, and black cardamom blended with a syrup made from orange zest and raw cacao nibs - more orangey than chocolatey in the event They say it makes a 'decadent' Old Fashioned though I was pretty happy sipping it on the rocks.

The other cheese pairings were Bath Blue with sloe gin (I’ve pulled the same trick with Stilton), Comté with Bramble gin liqueur and Petite Rouell Cendrée (a Pyreneean goats cheese) with Bees Knees which I think must be one of their limited edition gins as I can't find it online. Or maybe this cocktail.

Anyway it proves that flavoured gins and gin liqueurs definitely have a place alongside a cheeseboard should you care to push the boundaries with your guests.

See also Six pairings for gin that might surprise you

* a blend of 50ml gin, 20ml dry vermouth (though he modified it to 10ml dry, 10ml sweet to pair against the dish) and 10ml-20ml juice from homemade cocktail cherries

I attended the dinner as Sipsmith’s guest.

Tunworth cheese and Hubert Lignier Charmes Chambertin

Whenever I see a producer is about to pair their best wine with cheese my heart sinks, particularly if the cheese is ripe and the wine red. But on this occasion - a tasting and lunch at the Quality Chop House - it worked.

The wine was a sublime 2007 Charmes-Chambertin grand cru from Hubert Lignier that had all the qualities you want from a great burgundy - beautiful pure fruit, a silky (actually more velvety in this case) texture and a long luxuriant finish.

Amazingly it retained all those qualities when partnered with a gooey Tunworth (left of picture) a Camembert-style cows’ cheese from Hampshire - though not quite as well with a Sainte Maure goats’ cheese (right).

How come? Well, although the Tunworth had the mushroomy flavour of a fine Camembert - or Brie for that matter - it didn’t have its pungency. It was more creamy than buttery. And the wine was very intense. I’ve paired ripe pinots before with Brie in particular and they’ve worked - and lighter burgundies which haven’t. I wouldn’t have wanted it with the Burgundians' favourite Epoisses though.

For interest, the courses which preceded it were a very good house terrine and a Barnsley chop with buttery mash, both good simple foils for a lovely selection of Lignier’s Morey-Saint-Denis and Gevrey-Chambertin.