Roast pigeon and Salice Salentino

A slightly unseasonal but absolutely delicious wine pairing from Bjorn van der Horst’s much anticipated new restaurant Eastside Inn. The talented Van der Horst used to cook at the Greenhouse and then for Gordon Ramsay at La Noisette and has now branched out on his own. I’ll be posting a full review in the next couple of days but this, for me, was the outstanding match of the meal, selected by sommelier Thierry Sauvanot, also ex-Ramsay.

The key ingredient - a highly original twist - was a gooseberry compote which really keyed into the wine, a Cantele Salice Salentino 2006 from Puglia. It lifted it above the ordinary (not that there was anything wrong with it, it’s just an inexpensive wine) and made it taste sumptuously brambly and velvety. The other accompaniments - a rich but not over-heavy jus and some girolles acted as a good supporting cast.

A lesson that you don’t necessarily have to drink great wine with Michelin-starred food if the sommelier knows his job.

My meal at Eastside Inn was complimentary

Tuscan-style sausages and beans with Montepulciano

It’s been so busy the last few weeks that good pairings have been coming thick and fast but this was a great match I enjoyed at an offbeat new occasional restaurant which was launched by food and wine writer Marc Millon in Topsham, Devon the other day. (He’s also contributed a couple of pieces to this site including this wonderful piece about Bagna Cauda)

The deal is simple and great value: you get a couple of courses for £12.50 (£10 for Marc's Club Vino wine club members), wine and cheese extra. The main course was some fantastic fennel-flavoured Gloucester Old Spot pork sausages that Marc had had made to his own recipe by a local producer Jason Wise of Ark. They were served with rich mealy beans cooked with garlic, sage and tomato.

The accompanying vivid, fruity Montepulciano Rosso Madregale IGT Terre di Chieti was perfect for both the dish and the occasion. Quaffable but with sufficient personality to stand up to the punchy flavours. (Beans are in fact incredibly wine-friendly)

Marc’s philosophy is that you shouldn’t just buy wine but soak up the culture around it. To quote his website “Vino [his wine club] is for those of us who want to go beyond just drinking wine, to enhance our enjoyment, understanding and appreciation of wine by learning about the people and places where great, genuine wines come from, how wines are made, the cycle of the vineyard year, the gastronomy and culture of a region.” Amen to that!

Topsham by the way is a pretty, unspoilt little town on the estuary of the River Exe just south-east of Exeter and well worth a visit in its own right. (I was a student at Exeter rather longer ago than I care to remember and it has hardly changed) We stayed at the Globe Hotel which is a proper, welcoming old-fashioned pub.

For more information about Marc’s wines visit the Vino website. The Montepulciano sells for £6.60 a bottle or £5.70 a bottle by the case if you're a Club Vino member.

Chocolate terrine with Brachetto d'Acqui 2007

It’s a mystery to me why we need a Chocolate Week. Surely no-one (except aberrants like myself who have an inexplicable preference for potatoes) needs encouraging to eat chocolate. But there we have it and you’ll find plenty of opportunities to enjoy your favourite food in the country’s classiest chocolate shops over the next few days.

So this week’s match had to be chocolate-related really and the best match I’ve had recently was at the Piemontese wine dinner I mentioned the other day - a rich chocolate terrine with roasted hazelnuts (above) with a Brachetto d’Acqui from Contero.

Now I’ve written many times before about the virtues of sweet reds with dark chocolate but it was extraordinary how well this very light (5.5%) sparkling dry red paired with such a rich dessert thanks to a bitter cherry twist that picked out the accompanying dark berry sauce quite beautifully. I suspect it would also go well with desserts that contained blackberries. You can find it in one of this country’s most interesting wine merchants The Flying Corkscrew and also in everywine.co.uk which charges £75.04 for a case of six.

If you want to pursue your passion for chocolate you can find out more about what events are being held this week in the events section of www.chocolate-week.co.uk. There seem to be tastings of chocolate with every conceivable beverage including wine, cognac, tea, sake and even a cheese and chocolate matching though I’m not quite so sure about the wisdom of that one . . .

Mushroom risotto with Barbera

I went to a Piemontese wine dinner last week at a local Italian restaurant in Bristol, Prosecco about which I’ve written before. There were some very good matches - along with a couple of off-key ones, one of which involved a faulty bottle which the wine merchant introducing the event seemed determined to disregard despite grumblings from the floor.

One of the best was a fabulous mushroom risotto which had been paired with a very attractive 2003 Barbera d’Asti Superiore ‘Tere Caude’, Ca’ del Matt. Fruity Italian reds tend to work well with mushroom risotto (Dolcetto is another example) but this was a particularly good match - a wine with great intensity and character but also enough bottle age to mellow the youthful exuberance that the winemaker - a New Zealander called Matt Thompson - had introduced to this traditional style.

It’s a useful wine that would comfortably take you right through an Italian meal - slow roast pork with fennel would be another good pairing. You can buy it from www.everywine.co.uk.

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