Match of the week
Wood-roasted fish and assyrtiko
This might not sound like the most cutting edge pairing - unless you haven’t heard of assyrtiko which is perfectly possible - but bear with as they say …
It’s Santorini’s signature grape variety and creates superbly elegant dry white wines so why wouldn’t it go with roast or grilled fish (which I seem to remember was grouper)?
That’s academic anyway. The key point was the different textures of fish. The flesh was as you’d expect, fine, sweet and delicate but the skin which had been enhanced by what I imagine was wood roasting, was the thing, Crisp, slightly chewy and umami-rich it went brilliantly well with the 2018 Gaia wild ferment assyrtiko we were drinking.
My picture of the fish is rubbish so the shot above is from a photo library but here's the view from the taverna, To Pasaraki. Not too shabby, eh?
Assyrtiko, as we discovered, goes with absolutely everything you’d be likely to eat on the island but it was this insight that textured older vintages play particularly well with a whole roast fish that was illuminating.
Tou can buy the current 2021 vintage in the UK from allaboutwine.com for £29.49 which might sound expensive but is cheap, by Santorini standards, for a wine of this quality. If you buy some I’d hang onto it for a couple of years.
I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Gaia wines. For more assyrtiko pairings read this very knowledgeable piece by Peter Pharos.
The best food pairings for Assyrtiko.
The top photo by JGA at shutterstock.com is of a roast grouper. Not the one I'm describing but near enough!
Assyrtiko and cold herb soup
As Greece’s best known grape variety you’d probably think of pairing assyrtiko with meze or seafood but as this week’s match of the week shows it’s good away from its home territory too.
The soup was one of a number of courses at one of my favourite local restaurants, Wilsons in Bristol. It was served cold and was light, fresh and gorgeously silky, topped with salted cream and a spoonful of Exmoor caviar. (I reckon it was both the slight bitterness of the herbs and the saltiness of the cream that made it so especially delicious. Being slightly saline itself, assyrtiko which is a sharp citrussy white in a similar register to albariño, likes salty food too.
It also went brilliantly with some goats curd tartlets and Jan Wilson’s ‘farm taco’ a crunchy little mouthful of home-grown herbs and something else delicious folded, taco-style, into a bigger leaf. Again, there was a bitter edge there but bitter isn’t bad - think dark chocolate and espresso coffee, both seductively bitter tastes.
The assyrtiko was a 2019 from Papagiannakos in Attica and I see you can buy it for £14.50 currently from Hennings wine.
For other suggestions with herbs see What wines (or other drinks) should you pair with herbs
Roast cauliflower with preserved lemon dressing and Assyrtiko
A similar type of salad to last week’s match of the week (as you can see I’m already not getting out much!) from Claire Thomson’s excellent Home Cookery Year
It was a roasted cauliflower and red onion salad with a punchy lemony dressing made from preserved lemons, garlic, lemon juice and fresh coriander to which I added some extra chickpeas
What was interesting about the match was that the Assyrtiko, a 2019 Gavalas from Santorini, was quite citrussy itself. I don’t normally go for lemony notes in wine with a lemony dish as it strips the flavour out of the wine but this survived admirably, probably to do with it’s searing acidity. Or maybe the preserved lemons whose saltiness heightened its own lemony character. Or, maybe the most likely explanation, the fact that it was an outstandingly good wine (it costs £29 from Kudos wines from a vineyard that is claimed to be the oldest in Greece)
You can find another one of Claire’s recipes here.
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