Couscous royale and 2011 Chateau Romanin Les Baux de Provence

Last week we returned to one of our much-loved haunts, Arles, and ate our way round some of our favourite restaurants (the ones that weren’t closed as a number mysteriously seemed to be at what you’d think was still peak holiday season).

One of them is a Moroccan restaurant called L’Entrevue which is now part of a sprawling multi-media centre which includes the bookshop Actes Sud, a cinema, and - rather improbably - a hammam. Instead of ordering our own dishes we decided to share a selection of starters and a couscous royale which was just as well. It was absolutely HUGE.

It includes all the meats - chicken, lamb, meatballs and merguez as well as a bowl of broth and harissa on the side to adjust the heat. We like it moderately hot - a double challenge.

Whereas I might have gone for a local Costières de Nîmes rosé with a lighter couscous with a meat feast like this it had to be a red - a deliciously mellow example from a biodynamic producer called Chateau Romanin in nearby Les Baux de Provence.

It’s a typically Provencal blend of syrah, grenache, cabernet sauvignon and mourvèdre but with 4 years of bottle age, enough maturity to soften any tannins. I can’t find it on sale in the UK but other southern French reds of a similar vintage would work too - as would Moroccan reds, which tend to be made from the same grapes.

Tea-smoked duck with beetroot jelly and Bandol

We may have got rid of the old convention of white wine with fish and red wine with meat but you’d still expect to drink a light wine with a starter and a more robust wine with your main course, non? Well not when it’s tea-smoked duck as I discovered at a great meal at one of our local Bristol restaurants, Riverstation in Bristol last week.

We’d been having a tasting with Jason Yapp of Yapp Brothers so had a fair number of bottles on the table to play with. The Bandol, a dense, rich, plummy Mas de la Rouvière 2007 from Domaine Bunan, didn’t look the most likely candidate but once I’d tasted the dish which had a really smokey edge I knew i had to try it.

It went brilliantly which goes to show if you want to drink Bandol right through a meal start with tea-smoked duck - or perhaps other smoked meats like venison. The slightly earthy taste of the beetroot helped too. (I’ll try and prise the recipe out of them.)

Apologies for not posting a pic of the dish. It wasn't my starter but my husband’s and as he was down the other end of the table he’d eaten most of it by the time I’d got to it.

The Bandol is £17.25 a bottle, btw. Expensive but worth it. It would be fantastic with a barbecued butterflied leg of lamb too.

Braised short ribs and Monastrell (aka Mourvèdre)

One of the tricky decisions to make when you’re serving a rich, winey stew is whether to go for a wine of equal weight or a lighter medium-bodied wine as a refreshing contrast.

We tried both options last night with a dish of short ribs I’d cooked overnight in the best part of a bottle of a Marquesa de la Cruz GSM (Garnacha Syrah Mazuelo) from Campo de Borja 2010 (6.99 Sainsbury’s) an ultraripe, lush, almost porty red that clocked in at 14.5%. Great for the ribs, not so great with them (too soft and sweet for what had become deep savoury flavours)

The final dish also defeated a Chianti Classico - much too light - but found its soulmate in another Spanish red, a Casa Castillo Monastrell 2009 Jumilla 14% imported by C & D wines, which turns out to retail at only 5.33 from Vinissimus though they have moved on to the 2010 vintage. It too was full-bodied (14%) but had a spiciness and structure that the GSM lacked. A terrific match.

Braised short ribs in red wine with Les Clos Perdus Corbières

The weather has been so absurdly autumnal this week that I cooked a substantial stew for friends on Saturday night, an intensely flavoured braise of beef short ribs (or pot au feu as our local butcher describes them) with plenty of lush, red wine (a Valdivieso Cabernet Sauvignon from the Maipo Valley in Chile which is part of the Waitrose own label range).

Because this cut is quite fatty even when skimmed I wanted something drier with more pronounced acidity to accompany it and had the perfect answer in a couple of beautifully crafted reds I’d come across at the Bristol Wine and Food Fair last month and which I'd been dying to try with food.

They’re from a domaine called Les Clos Perdus which is based in Peyriac de Mer in Languedoc and is run on biodynamic principles by an Australian and an Englishman with an unusual background - Paul Old, a former dancer who trained as a winemaker in Australia and Hugo Stewart who used to be a farmer in Wiltshire.

The two wines we drank with the stew were the 2005 Cuvée 31, a blend of Mourvèdre, Carignan and Grenache from Peyriac de Mer and 2005 Prioundo, a blend of Grenache, Cinsault and Mourvèdre. They couldn’t have been better with the stew though being a Mourvèdre fan I marginally preferred the Cuvée 31 which was more supple and aromatic. The Prioundo struck me as very similar to a Priorat.

You can buy their wines online by the case (Prioundo is £132, Cuvée 31, £149) or by the bottle from independent wine merchants such as Green & Blue in London and Corks of Cotham in Bristol. You can also find them in a number of top London restaurants such as Gordon Ramsay at Claridges, Club Gascon and The Square.