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.

Kylie Kwong's roasted beef fillet with Cape Mentelle Cabernet Merlot

Celebrations come thick and fast at this time of the year - first Burns' Night, and now Chinese New Year and Australia Day. Since both fall on the same day this year I thought I'd kill two birds with one stone (terrible expression but you know what I mean) and mark the Year of the Ox with a beef recipe matched with an Australian wine.

Appropriately enough the recipe - a barely seared beef fillet dressed with a punchy sweet and sour dressing - comes from Australia-based chef Kylie Kwong whose family originally came from China.

This is the kind of dish you could serve with either a red or white wine so I'd go for a (relatively) cool climate red with sweet fruit and supple tannins, a description that perfectly fits the Cape Mentelle Cabernet Merlot available from Waitrose and independent wine merchants for £11-£12.50 a bottle.

Image © Igor Klimov - Fotolia

Kedgeree and Western Australia Semillon

I realised the other day that there’s a marked French bias to this site. Partly because I spend a fair bit of time in France but also, I have to admit, because I do enjoy drinking French wine. So here, in an attempt to redress the balance and to celebrate Australia Day is an unusual but highly successful Aussie pairing.

Kedgeree, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is an Anglo-Indian dish that dates from the Raj. Originally based on lentils and rice it is generally made with smoked haddock or other smoked fish and hard boiled eggs. It’s very mildly spiced - not hot at all - and is a popular, brunch dish in the UK.

That, you might think, would make it a good partner for a sparkling wine which is what I would generally advise as a match but the other day we tried it with a 2006 Brookland Valley Semillon from Margaret River which had that characteristic gooseberry herbaceousness that characterises that region. It was a lovely wine: crisp, refreshing and almost spring-like, despite being fermented in oak, and a very good match for the smoked fish. You can find it - the wine not the fish - in Oddbins for £12.99.

Image © Martin Turzak - Fotolia.com