Meursault and black truffle crisps

Food is always a secondary consideration when you’re enjoying a really great bottle of wine but you don’t want anything to detract from it either.

So the choice by my neighbour and fellow wine buff Ruth Spivey of these Torres Spanish black truffle crisps with a very special bottle of 2008 Coche-Dury Meursault that we’d managed to persuade my pal and podcast collaborator Liam Steevenson to share with us, was inspired.

It was everything you would hope a mature Meursault would be, sumptuous, creamy, savoury, developing layers and layers of flavour in the glass. You never want to finish a wine like that - and you never forget it.

Given his generosity with the Coche I feel honour bound to mention we had a glass of Liam’s latest release, a deliciously, crisp, saline Alvarinho called Céu na Terra from Vinho Verde as a palate sharpener which would in any other circumstances have stolen the show. Especially, with seafood.

You can buy it from Red & White for £16.95. Which is a bargain compared to the £500-odd you’d pay for a bottle of Coche, if you could even get your hands on one. (And no, Liam didn’t pay anything like that!)

You can buy the crisps - and I would - for around £3.95 a 125g pack in good delis or online from Ocado for £3.49. They would also be very good with a decent bottle of Cava or vintage champagne.

Glazed bacon ribs and Meursault

What do you pair with a classic Irish dish of bacon and cabbage? Guinness might the traditional answer but when the bacon is celebrated northern Ireland butcher Peter Hannan’s amazing French trimmed dry cured bacon rack, glazed and cooked on the barbecue and served with an outrageously creamy parsley sauce then something a little more extravagant is called for.

But Meursault? How does that work? Well pork goes at least as well with white wine as red but it’s really all about the sauce. Cream absolutely loves chardonnay and with a sauce of this richness a classy burgundy like the 2012 Vincent Sauvestre Meursault Clos des Tessons we drank with it* is the answer. It was just stunning.

Two other matches that worked well were a deliciously refreshing medium dry 4.5% Meadow Farm Irish craft cider and - more unexpectedly - a dark, exotic blend of nero d’avola and nerello mascalese from Cantina Cellaro in Sicily which had an unusual taste of cloves which were of course the link to the ham. Would any nero d’avola work as well? I’m not sure it would but it would certainly be worth a try.

*From Robb Brothers in Portadown

Braised brill with truffles and La Rocca Soave

I’ve already mentioned this wine pairing as part of my write-up of the Action Against Hunger pop-up with Rick Stein but it was the outstanding match of last week.

It was an unusual dish which you can just about see from the rather blurry picture to the right. The brill - which was fabulously fresh - was braised rather than grilled and adorned with mushrooms and truffles which gave it a powerful umami hit.

Old white burgundy would have been the obvious choice but they had already run out of the Meursault on the wine list so we opted instead for the 2007 vintage of this highly unusual single vineyard Soave from Pieropan which we were lucky enough to get at the normal retail price.

It was an incredibly lush, voluptuous wine - just perfect with such a rich fish dish. A real treat.

Boiled Ballycotton lobster and premier cru Chablis

One of things I enjoyed most on our recent trip to Ireland* was the seafood. The fish shop in Midleton, Co. Cork had a fantastic array of locally caught lobster, crab and prawns at very reasonable prices. They tasted great too - really fresh and sweet.

The other day we snapped up a couple of boiled lobsters at about 9 euros each and enjoyed them with some home-made mayonnaise, freshly baked soda bread and a bottle of Daniel Defaix Côte de Lechet 2000 we’d bought in Chablis earlier this year and had fortunately (given the price of wine in Ireland) taken with us. It had that wonderfully creamy texture that Chablis acquires with age but was still fabulously fresh.

I prefer a richer Chardonnay such as a Meursault with grilled or sauced lobster but Chablis - and other cool climate Chardonnays - hit the spot perfectly when it’s cold.

* apologies to those of you who are used to more regular updates for the reduction in postings over the past 10 days ! We were without a broadband connection for much of the time and the signal on my mobile connect device was too faint to upload material successfully. (Made for a thorough rest though!)