Salad caprese and malagousia

One of the objectives of the organisers of our trip to Greece last week was to try to show how Greek wines pair with other international cuisines and flavours. It resulted in some quite bizarre dishes like black eye beans and kiwi fruit and chicken with carrot cream and tangerine gel but also provided some useful new insights.

One was how assyrtiko - Greece’s most popular and famous white wine - is not the only Greek wine you can pair with tomatoes. Malagousia, another crisp dry white but with a more of a floral character, works too.

It proved a really good match for a caprese-style salad with tomatoes, mozzarella and a zucchini/courgette pesto - against all my expectations, highlighting the tomato flavour. (My photo was so rubbish that this is a stock photo but the dish we tried also had ham in it.)

We actually tasted it blind as one of the rules of the trip, which was funded by the EU, was that we were not allowed to know what wines we were tasting as the focus was supposed to be on the PGIs or sub-regions but I later discovered it came from the Petriessa Estate on the island of Evia. (Seems counter-intuitive when you’re talking to the trade but there you go ...)

Malagousia also proved a good pairing with taramasalata and would also work well with classic Greek meze like hummus, tzatziki, olives and vine leaves and with spanakopita.

I participated in the trip as a guest of Wines of Central Greece. Photo by Viktor1 at shutterstock.com

Grilled lamb with mustard glaze and a 25 year old Xinomavro

I’m conscious I don’t post as many red wine pairings as I should partly because I tend to drink white wine more often, particularly at this time of year but this was a really spectacular match at a Visit Greece lunch at Above at Hide last week held to promote the Greek wine trails.

The main course, a hugely clever dish from chef Ollie Dabbous was Herdwick lamb, grilled over charcoal, glazed with violet mustard (and some kind of sweet element (maybe honey, maybe fig compote) served with a grain salad and pickled vine leaves, was one of the best mains I’ve had this year.

It was boldly served with a 25 year old xinomavro from Pegasos in the Naoussa wine region which echoed the figgy notes in the dish. And it was fascinating to see how long and how well a xinomavro could age, particularly when served from such a huge and flamboyant decanter (old wines don't always stand up to being decanted). You can, rather amazingly still buy the wine from Hedonism Wines.

The other great match of the lunch was a salad of chicory and pink grapefruit with herbs and a manouri cheese and acacia honey dressing with a 2020 Gaia Thalassitis Assyrtiko from Santorini. Equally good if less surprising.

I attended the lunch as a guest of the Greek Tourist Board.

Miso-glazed cabbage and orange wine

The way things are looking I don’t imagine there will be many standout matches of the week over the forthcoming months given that I’m out and about much less than normal. But this one, from Trivet in Bermondsey last week is truly excellent.

I went there for a (very) late lunch after a nearby tasting and sat at the bar where they do an all day menu that’s really quite serious. Proper food not just snacks of which one dish was this incredibly clever miso-glazed cabbage on skewers, cut to look like a kebab. It really was insanely delicious - sweet, savoury, deeply umami - and went perfectly with a gorgeously aromatic glass of Greek orange wine - the 2016 Domaine Tatsis Malagouzia. (There were also some very good grilled chicken wings alongside with which it also rubbed along happily.)

Trivet is run by two Heston Blumenthal alumni, chef Jonny Lake and sommelier Isa Bal who worked together at Fat Duck. While we can still get to restaurants in London I really suggest you go there - the wine list is also amazing. It’s at 36 Snowsfields, just near London Bridge.

Roast kid and dry Mavrodaphne

As it was my first Easter in Greece - which was celebrated a month later than that of the western Christian church this year - what could I focus on but what to drink with a Greek Easter lunch?

The centrepiece is a whole roast lamb or kid on a spit - in the case of the family I was staying with, kid. It’s simply seasoned with pepper, plenty of salt, stuffed with herbs such as thyme and rosemary then cooked slowly over the coals for 2 1/2-3 hours. The tastiest bits are the bits you pick with your fingers off the carcass and the kokoretsi - the offal, which is wrapped in the intestines and also roasted over the fire. That may, I realise, put off the more squeamish among you but it is truly delicious.

You could drink a white with this - the Greeks drink more white wine than red but the return of meat to the menu after lent calls for a bit more of a celebration. In our case that took the form of a magnum of the 2013 vintage of Gentilini’s Eclipse, an exotically fragrant dry mavrodaphne that was predictably great with the lamb but also particularly good with the more gamey flavour of the offal. If you're a Bandol fan you'd love it.

Other Greek reds such as agiorgitiko and xinomavro would obviously be good too, depending on where you are in Greece. This is definitely an occasion to drink local.

I was invited to spend Easter with Petros Markantonatos and Marianna Kosmetatos of Gentilini