Saint-Nectaire with Domaine Matassa Cuvée Alexandria 2012, Côtes Catalanes

While orange wines are becoming more common I’m still not sure most people know when and with what to drink them so here’s a pairing that worked really well from a dinner I hosted for Bar Buvette, one of my favourite Bristol haunts, last week.

The wine (which gets its colour from leaving the grape juice in contact with the skins, not from actual oranges) came from Domaine Matassa in the Roussillon and is made from Muscat of Alexandria, hence the name. The estate is run organically and biodynamically so it’s very much a natural wine though with an exotic taste of grapes and quince (so delicous and not scary at all).

I have to hand it to the bar’s owner Peter Taylor for suggesting we drink it with the cheese - I’d have probably gone for the main course of lamb which also tends to work well with orange wine (think lamb and quince) but it was a real winner with the aged Saint-Nectaire.

You can buy it for £20 from Les Caves de Pyrène though I suspect other orange wines would work well too.

See these other good pairings for Saint-Nectaire

Morbier cheese and Savagnin

It’s been a very cheesy few days this past week - and I mean that in the sense of being cheese-focussed rather than corny.

Some of the best pairings were at a cheese and cider event I co-hosted in Bristol but as I’m writing about that separately I’m going for an unexpectedly brilliant cheese and wine combination at the Jura wine tasting

You might be surprised to hear it involved not the region’s most famous style of wine, vin jaune, but an on the face of it humbler Savagnin Côtes du Jura called Cuvée Edouard from Domaine Badoz which has been making wine in the region since 1659.

At almost 4 years old (it came from the 2011 vintage) it combined a rapier-like acidity with a delicious creaminess that seemed to perfectly echo the well-matured Morbier, a semi-soft cheese from the same region with a distinctive streak of ash running through the centre. The combination of the two was simply sensational bringing out almondy and floral notes in the wine that hadn’t been immediately apparent. One of those rare 'Oh my God!' pairings!

I can’t frustratingly find this particular cuvée in the UK though The Sampler stocks other wines in the Badoz range but you can buy it online from the website for 25€

The other recommended pairings are with pan-fried scallops, truffled celeriac, langoustine ravioli with vin jaune butter, fennel, green apple and salted caramel, whiting with leeks and cockles with a citrus vinaigrette. So now you know!