Two exciting new pairings for asparagus

I’ve been thinking about the tricky subject of wine with asparagus for long enough to have come up with a number of different pairings but I came across two this week that were really a bit of a revelation.

The first was part of a meal at The Cauldron in St Werbergh’s, Bristol which is running a pop-up outdoor (covered) chef’s table called The Table* at which chef Henry Eldon serves a number of delicious courses from his wood-fired oven. One was a dish of chargrilled Wye Valley asparagus with ‘last year’s’ strawberries’, a fruity note which was perfectly echoed by the fresh tasting Corsican rosé from Domaine Vico TV presenter Andy Clarke had put on the wine list which, in a nice local touch, is sourced entirely from Bristol merchants and importers. The strawberries, which were lightly pickled (I think), created the bridge to the wine that made it particularly successful but dry rosé is pretty nice with asparagus anyway.

The other - also from Corsica - was the 2020 Sartène Blanc, a fabulously fragrant vermentino from Domaine Saparale, part of a line-up of spring and summer wines I tasted with Jason Yapp from Yapp Brothers and which we then again enjoyed with asparagus, this time with extra virgin olive oil, lemon juice and seasalt. Possibly one of the best asparagus pairings I’ve come across, I reckon because, as with the first pairing, the asparagus was served with olive oil rather than butter.

You can buy it from Yapp’s for £18.25 - which is not cheap but well worth it for a really lovely white that I suspect it will only get better over the summer

For other asparagus pairings see also Top wine pairings with asparagus

Unfortunately the Table is booked solid until July but follow them on thecauldronrestaurant on instagram to find out when the next booking period opens

Asparagus and Rondo (English red)

A wine-loving friend and I weren’t sure what to order the other night at Native in Southwark. The menu was suitably springlike but having had a glass of white beforehand (at the excellent Bar Douro) we fancied a red

Scrolling down the list we spotted a bottle of Three Choirs 2017 Ravens Hill, a blend of Rondo, Regent and other red grape varieties from Gloucestershire. It was light (11.5%), crunchy and delicious - quite similar in style to a Loire red.

We asked for it to be chilled and it sailed through the meal, particularly with the dishes that contained asparagus and alexander, a crunchy, herby, slightly bitter plant, also called horse parsley. The wine didn’t overwhelm the delicate crab they served with it either and also went well with my slightly sweet main course of pork with apple béarnaise and root vegetables

I haven’t taken Three Choirs who have been on the English wine scene for a good while, particularly seriously in the past but they do an attractive and reasonably priced own label English white for the Wine Society for £8.25. The Ravens Hill is £13.99 from the Oxford Wine Company.

For other asparagus pairings see Top Wine Pairings with Asparagus

Junmai sake with cheung fun, asparagus and shiitake mushrooms

It’s partly because not enough restaurants offer the option but I don’t drink sake often enough in Asian restaurants. (And yes, I know Asian is an imprecise term but that’s how many describe the food they offer)

Anyway proof, yet again that it is a reliable pairing at dinner last week at Wokyko Kauto in Bristol where I drank an Evening Sky junmai sake with a range of dishes including a brilliantly clever vegan dish of roasted cheung fun (rice noodle roll), apsaragus, shiitake mushrooms and Sichuan jus that had all the depth of flavour of a meat dish.

It also worked with an intensely flavoured onglet steak in black bean sauce (as surprisingly, did the tail end of a gin and tonic, made with their own Woky gin which has been developed for them by the local Psychopomp distillery and which is flavoured with nashi pear).

And - although you hardly needed a liquid accompaniment - with a moreish bowl of Korean fried chicken ramen with a deeply flavoured umami broth which is apparently made with serrano ham bones.

I’d like to try one of the other sakes when I go back (and it is a question of when rather than if. I definitely need that tang (umami broth) fix!)

I ate at Wokyko Kauto as a guest of the restaurant

When you can pair asparagus with red wine

The idea of partnering asparagus with wine is contentious enough but red wine? Surely that won’t work?

Well, it so happens it does as I managed to prove at an event called the Great British Asparagus Feast in Bristol last week when I picked the pairings for a menu that had been devised by three of the city’s top chefs.

The main course was a whole roast, brined chicken on a bed of wild garlic served with chargrilled asparagus cooked with sautéed girolles (wild mushrooms) and dukkah (a middle-eastern style topping of chopped hazelnuts and sesame seeds) from Josh Eggleton of The Pony & Trap.

I’d paired the 2014 Tyrrell’s ‘Old Winery’ Pinot Noir from south-east Australia with it in the hope that it would go with the chargrilled asparagus and mushrooms and it really worked - largely because it was quite a dark-fruited style of pinot rather than a light, raspberry-scented one. You can buy it from independent wine merchants including Dennhöfer Wines and Richard Granger Wines for between £10-12 which is excellent value for money for a pinot.

The other matches were a Gavi di Gavi with a dish of asparagus, hand-rolled cavatelli, slow-cooked egg and goats cheese from Adelina Yard which I picked to reflect the Italian influence of the dish and a lovely lush white Chateauneuf-du-Pape ‘Les Hauts de Barville’ 2014 from Maison Brotte with a dish of asparagus, with white and brown crab meat, saffron and lovage from Wallfish Bistro.

We finished with a cheese course rather than a dessert - Caerphilly with pickled asparagus with which I paired a medium-dry cider - Charmer from Somerset producer Orchard Pig. (Well, the dinner did take place in the West Country!).

Oh, and we kicked off with a sparkling wine called Castlebrook Brut which came from one of the asparagus producers, Wye Valley which you can actually buy in selected branches of Marks & Spencer (and from their website)

The wines were sourced from Stewart Wines who supply Yurt Lush who hosted the dinner.