Wagyu beef steak and Vasse Felix Heytesbury Chardonnay

Last night was my first in a two week trip of Australia - an informal dinner with Vasse Felix at a Chinese restaurant in Perth (Grand Palace).

It showed great confidence to choose a restaurant on the basis that it was near my hotel rather than the fact that it prepared food they knew would go with the wines. Chardonnay and Cabernet are not the obvious matches for Chinese food.

I really like the wines, most particularly the crisp, refreshing Semillon-Sauvignon (good with the salt and pepper squid) but it was the sensuously creamy 2009 Heytesbury Chardonnay that really stole the evening. And no wonder because it's picked up all kinds of gongs including the Len Evans award for best wine in show at the National Wine Show in Canberra last year. (And the 2010 vintage won the best young white wine in the Melbourne Wine Show recently.)

I thought it would go with the scallop dish we picked - a selection of scallops with black beans, chilli sauce and garlic and shallots but it was in fact the Western Australia Wagyu beef cooked with ginger, shallots and a touch of sesame oil that was the knockout match of the evening, outperforming even the Vasse Felix Heytesbury Cab.

Of course most people will always prefer a red with steak but an oaky white can do the job just as well.

Plaice with clams, girolles and mash with FMC Chenin

I only have to look at how many of my matches of the week involve fish to realise that it now appeals to me more than meat. Not that I’m anti-meat by any means it’s just that the sort of wine you pair with it is fairly predictable, well-trodden ground.

Piscine pairings are much more intriguing - this week’s match being a case in point. A clever, complex dish of grilled plaice, clams, girolles, celery and mash (right) which was served at a wine dinner at Medlar in Chelsea which featured Ken Forrester’s FMC Chenin from Stellenbosch.

White wine and fish - what’s unusual about that, you might ask? The wine, that’s what. With 6.1g of residual sugar it’s not really a dry white yet with an lively acidity it’s doesn’t taste medium dry or ‘demi-sec’ either - particularly not the most recent 2009 vintage. It’s just incredibly lush - like a great white burgundy or rich dry white Bordeaux.

The ingredient that the chefs had cleverly included in the dish which made the pairing was some buttery mash which keyed in beautifully to all that richness and left the citrussy notes to chime with the seafood. The girolles and the crisp fried onions also helped. I don’t think it would have worked with older vintages such as the 2007 which would be better suited to spicy dishes like butter chicken, Thai-spiced scallops or rich pâtés and foie gras.

I’d heard good things about Medlar which were borne out by this dinner. Well worth the detour to this end of town.

I ate at Medlar as a guest of Enotria who import the FMC and other Ken Forrester wines.

Roast chicken with tarragon and asparagus and oaked white Bordeaux

When it’s as warm and sunny as it has been for the last few days I don’t really fancy a traditional English Sunday lunch or the sort of wines that go with it so yesterday we had one with a difference. A roast chicken, served warm or tiède, as the French call it with roast cauliflower and seared asparagus.

The chicken was flavoured with tarragon butter worked under the skin, as suggested by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall in the Guardian this weekend and there was yet more tarragon, lemon and garlic inside the bird. No gravy, just the pan juices.

The obvious pairing would have been a good white burgundy or comparable cool climate Chardonnay but I thought it might work with a 2007 bottle of S de Suduiraut Bordeaux Blanc I had in the rack. Which it admirably did though whether that was due to the tarragon or the accompanying asparagus, which nicely picked up on the Sauvignon in the blend I’m not sure. Probably a bit of both.

The wine, which was sent to me to try, is an attractive one, made by a producer, Château Suduiraut, which is better known for its Sauternes. It hasn’t got quite the lushness you find in some oaked white Bordeaux but it is still quite young. I was also battling a cold. But in general I feel wines like this are distinctly underrated.