Bacon cheeseburger with Pinea 17 Ribera del Duero

I’m not normally someone who craves a ‘dirty burger’ but when I was sent a couple in a meat delivery from my mate Northern Irish butcher Pete Hannan I thought I’d go the full hog with it.

It was pretty spectacular in itself - a thick patty of salt-aged Glenarm shorthorn beef which I then proceeded to load with Pitchfork cheddar (from cheesemaker friends Trethowan Brothers), crisp-fried streaky bacon (from Brown & Forrest) and some addictive deep fried onion rings from the previous weekend’s Indian cooking experiment from Roopa Gulati’s new book, India from the World Vegetarian series. Plus a brioche-style bun from my local offie, amazingly. How burger buns have moved on.

It was quite a challenge for any wine to stand up to and I would normally have gone for a new world cabernet sauvignon or Bordeaux blend but happened to have a bottle of the Pinea 17 Ribera del Duero open, an impressive wine which normally retails at £52 but is on promotion currently at winebuyers.com for £35 (still expensive, I know).

You might think it was way too serious a wine but I have previously found that expensive, structured full-bodied reds show surprisingly well with burgers. This was a modern style of Ribera del Duero, already mature for a 2017, and deliciously smooth and velvety.

For other ideas check out Six of the best pairings for a burger

Disclosure. The burgers, cheese and bacon were gifts and the wine a sample. Yes, I *know*. I know I’m lucky to be in this business and apologies if it comes across as smug or entitled 🙄

Salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn with a mature South African syrah blend

Showing off a mature bottle of red is usually a question of keeping it simple but it adds an extra dimension if you can serve the perfect cut.

I’ve written before about Pete Hannan’s salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn beef (in fact a couple of you have been lucky enough to win one of his fabulous meat hampers). It has an incredible savoury depth of flavour plus a slight salinity from the salt ageing that shows off a good red to perfection.

I had a 2012 vintage of La Motte’s Hanneli R*, a blend of syrah (from two different sites in Elim and Franschhoek), grenache and petit sirah which I’d been meaning to try for a while and it really was the perfect moment to enjoy it. Every element was beautifully balanced and integrated which was impressive given it had been aged in oak for 40 months* (So impressed was I by the pairing that I tried it again to equal effect with Samantha O'Keefe of Lismore's 2016 syrah on New Year's Eve. You may have read that her home and vineyards were devastated by fire just before Christmas. All the more reason to support her in any way you can by buying and drinking her wine)

Too often I think we drink new world wines, especially the more expensive ones, way too young. We really should tuck them away and hang on to them.

See also The best wine pairing for steak

* The current vintage - although it appears that it's only available in South Africa - is the 2013 but you could obviously drink a mature Rhône red to equal effect.

Saperavi with slow cooked wagyu beef

Continuing the exotic vibe of last week’s pairing the standout combination this week was a Georgian Saperavi with Welsh Wagyu beef!

The beef, which is raised in Montgomeryshire, is part of the tasting menu at Ynyshir, a Michelin-starred restaurant on the edge of Snowdonia national park I enthusiastically reviewed for Decanter a couple of months ago.

It’s a regular feature on their tasting menu - on this occasion brined for 4 days and cooked for 3 (I seem to remember the chef who presented it telling us) and finished on the barbecue which gave it a slightly smoky edge which was reflected in the wine.

Saperavi is one of Georgia’s indigenous and most widely planted red grape varieties and - for the geeks among you - a ‘teinturier’, a variety which gains its colour from the flesh of the grape not just the skin.

This particular example was a 2015 from Ibereli and is imported by Les Caves de Pyrène. It’s relatively light but has sufficient character to stand up to the intensely flavoured meat.

Although Ynyshir doesn’t do pairings as such, the sommelier Amelia has a knack of picking wines that will go well with her partner Gareth’s food. Another standout - and surprising - pairing was a dish of pork belly with pickled cherries and a richly flavoured ‘natural’ chardonnay called Wind Gap from Mahle in Sonoma. (That's stocked by Roberson)

Pickled cherries, pork and chardonnay? Hard to replicate but believe me it works!

The picture of of Wagyu beef was taken by HL photo. It wasn’t the beef in the restaurant which was cooked for considerably longer. (The light was too low to take a good shot)

© HL photo at fotolia.com

Roast beef and Bordeaux

OK, this is one of the most classic wine pairings in the world but none the worse for that.

I was treated to lunch at The Wine Society on Friday following a tasting through some of their latest releases. For those of you who aren’t members and haven’t been there it occupies a rather unlovely '70s (I’d guess*) building on the outskirts of one of Britain’s unlovelier towns, Stevenage. In a private dining room which looks like - and probably is - a conference room they provided a totally resplendent roast dinner including perfectly cooked roast beef, Yorkshire puddings, gorgeously crisp roast potatoes and parsnips and carrots, beans and broccoli. (We Brits love a shedload of vegetables on the side)

With that they served two venerable reds - a 1998 Chateau La Mondotte Saint-Emilion and a Penfold’s 707 from the same vintage. Interestingly there was no qualitative difference between the two wines, except perhaps in stayability - the 707 dropped off slightly before the Mondotte which was still astonishingly fresh but both were mellow sweet and delicious. There was no obvious old word/new world contrast - it was more like comparing two wines from the right and left banks of Bordeaux.

Why does beef work so well? Well it’s deeply savoury, not too powerful - the vegetables are by and large neutral. It’s the perfect backdrop to a fine wine - As the Wine Society would know. Both had been decanted a couple of hours beforehand.

Incidentally The Wine Society, which I'd advise anyone to join, is not just about such rarified treasures. One of the best value wines I tasted on the day was their own 2015 Corbières at £7.75 which I encouraged the friends I was staying with to buy and which rapidly got demolished over the weekend. It’s fabulously vibrant blend of carignan and grenache that would make great everyday drinking. And obviously go well with beef too ….

*Turns out it's 'an unlovely 60s building, extended in the 70s, 80s, 90s and 100s' according to the Wine Soc's PR, Ewan. And it IS a private dining room not a conference room ;-)