Match of the week

Pork, chilli, coconut and gapi salad with Momo Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc
I’ve been tasting a lot of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc this week but was also reminded how well it goes with Asian food at Peter Gordon’s new restaurant Kopapa.
I ordered a glass of the Momo Sauvignon Blanc on their wine list and found it sailed effortlessly through the tapas-style dishes, especially a bite-sized, Thai-ish Pork chilli coconut and gapi salad with roasted shallots. (Gapi is the pungent Thai shrimp paste so this was quite a challenging dish.) It also survived the surprisingly delicious chickpea battered lambs brains with tomato masala my companion bravely ordered and - more to be expected - some grilled chermoula marinated tiger prawns with watermelon pickle
Momo, I discover, is made by Seresin which is now an organic and biodynamic producer though they only claim organic status for this range. It’s also fermented with wild yeasts which gives the wine a much less aggressively herbaceous character than some cheaper Sauvignon Blancs (though, as I’ve learnt this week, that is exactly what draws so many of its fans to it).
You can buy it in the UK from Harper Wells for £10.75 a bottle (£10.50 if you buy six), a good price for a wine of this quality. AG Wines stocks it for £11.25.
Image © Blinztree - Fotolia.com

Laksa and Riesling
Laksa is one of those dishes you hesitate to pair with wine being both a soup and really spicy but the pairing I came across at the Pegasus Bay wine dinner at The Providores the other night was spot on.
One of the reasons I think it worked so well was that the chicken that had been used to make the laksa had apparently been smoked and smoked food is generally good with Riesling. It was also aromatic rather than fierily hot and contained - I would guess - a fair amount of coconut milk which tends to ease in a wine pairing.
As I’ve mentioned the Riesling, the 2008 Pegasus Bay ‘Bel Canto’, was already acquiring those appealing limey, kerosene notes which chimed in perfectly with the flavours of the soup. (You might think that you’d go for a simpler, less expensive Riesling with this sort of dish but in my opinion it was the intensity of the wine that made the match work so well.)
It’s not widely available but you should be able to track down a stockist through New Generation wines in the UK (info@newgenerationwines.com) and Empson USA in the US (nbarber@empsonusa.com). For other stockists see the Pegasus Bay website.
Image © FomaA - Fotolia
Most popular
.jpg)
My latest book

News and views
.jpg)


