Tandoori lamb chops and a Portuguese red

In our careless way we often refer to Indian food as ‘curry’ especially when talking about wine pairing but the base ingredient and the way it is cooked is just as important as in any other cuisine. And surprisingly the wine match can be quite obvious.

Lamb chops and red wine? Hardly rocket science. But you might think the fact that they were marinated and came with a pungently spicy mint sauce as at Pahli Hill in Mortimer Street London’s West End would have thrown a red off track.

The wine we drank with them was one of the reds that were available by the glass Azamor, Vinho Regional Alentejano Tinto, Portugal 2019 an impressively complex blend of Syrah, Touriga Nacional, Merlot, Trincadeira, Alicante Bouschet, Mourvèdre and Petit Verdot. It had that lovely suppleness so many Portuguese reds possess but also packed a fair wallop of alcohol which you might have thought would be jarring but which was pitch perfect with the chops.

I think the fact that we ate them without anything in the way of side dishes* helped but I think it would have still powered through.

You can buy the wine for £15.49 from Hay Wines, or £15.98 from Alexander Hadleigh.

*Although we did have some marvellous chicken tikka as well with which it also went brilliantly.

I ate as a guest in the restaurant though we ordered our own wine;

Indian seafood and Sollasa Mumbai

Deciding what to drink in an Indian restaurant if you don’t go for beer is always a bit of a challenge but now there’s a new option in the form of Sollasa, a delicious aperitif-type drink that has been created to go with Indian food.

I met up with its young founder Vishal Patel and tried it out with several dishes at our local Indian restaurant Nutmeg (he turns out to live in my neighbourhood in Bristol).

At 20% it’s a bit like a cross between a gin and a ‘bianco’ vermouth - you can drink it with tonic or soda or as a cocktail (they suggest a Sollasa Collins or a Sollasa sour)

It’s actually really nice on its own too, quite fragrant - almost floral. I picked up passionfruit which proved not to be in it (what do I know? 🙄) but you will find orange, lychee, lime, mint, basil, coriander seeds cardamom and a pinch of sea salt. It's a bit like having a cocktail without having the bother of making one.

The two dishes I thought it went best with were some crispy Koliwada king prawns seasoned with smoked paprika and ginger and the Allepey Moli, or molee, a Keralan fish stew (on this occasion based on monkfish) in coconut sauce with mustard , fenugreek, curry leaf and tamarind. But it was surprisingly good with some Punjabi lamb chops too.

It’s only just been launched so it’s not widely available but you can buy it for £28.95 at 31dover.com, and £29 from Master of Malt or from their website sollasa.com

See also What wine to drink with curry - my top 5 picks

I tried the pairings at Nutmeg as a guest of Sollasa.

Curried lentils with Waipara riesling

Riesling is often paired with Indian food though I don’t think it always works with hotter curries. But with this anglicized version of a dal from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s new book Eat Better Forever it was spot on.

I say anglicized because, cumin seeds apart, it was based on curry powder rather than individual spices and also had extra lentils stirred in at the end, hence the title double dahl. So it was quite mild, accentuated by two accompanying salads, a ‘raita’ salad with apple, cucumber and mint - quite similar to the Meera Sodha salad I made last week - and a lightly dressed carrot salad with a lemony dressing.

I had a bottle of New Zealand winery Pegasus Bay’s 2018 riesling from the Waipara Valley in North Canterbury. At 13% it was comparatively strong for riesling with a touch of sweetness that was easily able to handle the spice. I remember drinking a sylvaner with a mild vegetable curry that worked in a similar way. You can buy the 2017 vintage from Waitrose Cellar for £16.99 (and on promotion at £12.74 until tomorrow, March 9th 2021).

For other suggestions see What to Drink with Dal

The Pegasus Bay was a press sample and Eat Better Forever which is published by Bloomsbury at £26 (although you can buy it for £13.65 from their website currently), a review copy.

Indian veggie food and sauvignon blanc

After a lively discussion about what to drink with curry on my #weekendwinematching slot it was good to discover a new angle on pairing wine with Indian food.

I was making a couple of dishes (with friends on Zoom) from Roopa Gulati’s excellent new India: The World Vegetarian which included paneer with spinach and Punjabi cauliflower with ginger. These are much lighter and fresher than the kind of heavily sauced Indian recipes you would find in the average curry house and I was thinking they might go with a dry rosé but in fact they absolutely sang with a bottle of 2018 Chateau Bauduc sauvignon blanc I had open after an online tasting earlier that day.

Makes sense when you think about it. You could have easily have added a squeeze of lemon to either dish and the refreshingly citrussy sauvignon had a similar effect.

The following night I tried three other dishes from the book - bhel puri, aubergines with a very garlicky tomato masala and a lime dal which went brilliantly well with a juicy, smashable Beaujolais that my local wine bar Kask is selling on tap which proves you can drink light dry wines with spicy food - although neither meal was that hot.

I still like aromatic wines (and beer, of course) with Indian food but it’s good to know they’re not the only option.

What wine to pair with curry: my top 5 picks

* weekendwinematching is a fortnightly live discussion on my @winematcher Twitter feed. Follow me to keep track of when the next one is!