Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Venerable wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd went for a combination of the second and third strategies - choosing for Burgundy specialist Jasper Morris’s leaving lunch a light summery starter of raw scallops with cucumber, radish and apple salad that wasn’t the obvious match for some simply thrilling white burgundies. But obviously nobody cared - it was an incredible treat to get to taste such wines.

The wine that ‘did’ hit the spot was an oak-aged 2014 Dog Point Section 94 sauvignon blanc* from Marlborough in New Zealand, very much in its prime, which absolutely sang with the scallops but would you turn your nose up at a 2004 Meursault or Montrachet? I suggest, dear reader, you would not.

The other standout combination rather than standout wines (they were all spectacular) were the two reds that were served with the cheese course of Montgomery cheddar, Tunworth and Cote Hill Blue (a blue brie from Lincolnshire) - a 2003 Vega Sicilia Unico and a 1997 Ridge Monte Bello. Great choice of cheeses - none were too strong or stinky and both reds were mellow and mature enough for their tannins not to create problems with the cheese - which can be the case with younger wines

The main course of lamb with grilled Provençal vegetables and an olive crumb worked predictably well with two grand cru Charmes Chambertins - a 2010 from Olivier Bernstein and a 2000 from Denis Bachelet and a 1999 Volnay Santenots-du-Milieu from Domaines des Comtes Lafon (in magnum)

And I should confess that we drank 2001 Chateau d’Yquem with the dessert - a lemon tart with orange carpaccio and lime (and maybe coconut) tuile

I doubt if any of us - including the Berry’s team - got a great deal of work done that afternoon ....

* which you can currently buy on special offer at £18.95 from Hennings and £19 from The Wine Society.

I ate at Berry Bros as their guest.

Tipsy cake, roast pineapple and Chateau d’Yquem

Let’s face it, I don’t get to drink Chateau d’Yquem every day so what else could last week’s match of the week be than this stellar pairing I had at Dinner at Heston Blumenthal?

It was a dessert called tipsy cake which has been on the menu since the restaurant opened. Hard to describe - it’s a bit like a superlight sugary brioche with a layer of gorgeous gooey Sauternes-laced sauce underneath and is served with spit-roast pineapple. That was the key to the match bringing out all the apricot and tropical fruit flavours in the 2011 Yquem we were tasting. The dessert is dated 1810 but I bet they didn’t produce such a delicious version as that in those days - as Heston acknowledges in this video.

As I mentioned the other day in my post on whether great wine needs to be aged as long as we think it does it was extraordinary to be served an Yquem as young as that. Instinctively it seemed like baby-snatching but it couldn’t have been more delicious.

It may be worth applying that principle to cheaper Sauternes and similar sweet Bordeaux wines. And maybe thinking of roast pineapple when you next want to create a knock-out wine pairing for Yquem should you be fortunate enough to find yourself in that position . . .

I ate at Dinner as a guest of Chateau d’Yquem.