Three surefire pairings for pinot noir

Most of the time, as you’ll have noticed, I feature the more offbeat wine pairings I’ve come across in my match of the week slot. This week I’ve been reminded of the virtue of some that seldom go wrong.

All involve pinot noir, surely one of the most food-friendly of reds. The first was at a sustainability event I co-hosted for New Zealand Winegrowers. My task was to pair five different grape varieties from sustainable wineries (which the vast majority in New Zealand are) with vegetarian dishes. The glorious 2010 Felton Road Bannockburn pinot noir from Central Otago which was showing beautifully, was perfect with some creamy mushroom-topped toasts with a crisp parmesan wafer. (That vintage is available at Berry Bros & Rudd for £350 a case in bond - you'll find more recent vintages elsewhere for £30-35.)

The second was at The Gainsborough in Bath where I was tasting wines from another Kiwi producer, Gladstone in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand (just next door to Martinborough). In this instance the wine was their 2013 pinot noir, a younger, more elegant wine with incredibly pure fruit, and the food a dish of roast pork loin with mushrooms, black pudding and fresh broad (fava) beans. (York Wines have it for £17.95 which is a bargain.)

And finally - closer to home at the Three Gables restaurant* in Bradford-on-Avon - a reminder how brilliant duck is with pinot noir - the twist in this case being that the pinot was Brazilian - the impressively silky 2014 Valduga Indidate pinot noir which is currently selling off the wine list for a very reasonable £28 a bottle or £8.50 a glass. That's on sale currently at Selfridges for £14.99 and imported by Berkmanns.

Useful information, I hope, because sometimes, rather than starting with the food, you've got a special wine you want to enjoy with something that will show it at its best.

The best food pairings for pinot noir

Parsley soup, snails and Muscadet!

Not the most appealing food and wine pairing you may think but I have to assure you it was delicious! It was at the newly opened Berners Tavern which is run by chef-of-the-moment Jason Atherton.

I’d dropped by for an early lunch before a tasting I was doing so decided to eat from the starter menu and it was the soup - a Caroll’s potato and parsley soup, Dorset snails, Stornaway black pudding and Breville brioche toastie, to give it its full title - that really caught my eye, not least because of the idea of eating a 70s-style toastie in a posh restaurant.

As you can see the parsley gave it an amazing deep green colour, the perfect balance to the savoury snails and black pudding. And the Muscadet - a 2010 Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine sure Lie from Domaine du Verger which they sell by the glass - had just the right crisp, clean flavour to cut through. (It would match equally well with the French classic of snails with garlic butter I reckon.)

I also tried it with a couple of oysters dressed with a Vietnamese dressing - interestingly not as good as oysters served au naturel.

By the way I’d recommend Berners Tavern if you’re looking for somewhere impressive to eat off Oxford Street. It’s not cheap but it’s one of those clever menus that has something for everyone and is an absolutely gorgeous room.

Palais Royal and Roquefort

We’ve been down in the Languedoc for the past week, revisiting some of the winemakers we haven’t seen for a while. They included Domaine de l’Arjolle, one of the first wineries we bought from when we bought a holiday home down here in the early 1990s.

Like most wineries in those days they were running the whole thing on a shoestring and the winery was pretty ramshackle. I seem to remember an old mattress being propped up against the cellar wall (maybe for some unfortunate cellar hand who was deputed to keep an eye on the tanks overnight) but nowadays they have a pukka tasting room and cellar and obviously welcome a fair number of visitors.

The owner Louis-Marie Teisserenc (right) remembered that I was interested in food and wine pairing and produced a series of impromptu snacks to partner the wines as we went along. I have to confess I couldn’t resist trying some superb foie gras sprinkled with red wine-flavoured ‘sel de vin’ which was sensationally good with their late picked - but dry - Dernier Cueillette Chardonnay 2007.*

What Teisserenc referred to as ‘black pooding’ (aka boudin noir) was a pretty good match with their oddball Zinfandel ‘Z’ de l’Arjolle though the 2008 vintage was much lighter than the luxuriant 2007 I enjoyed earlier this year (which still seems to be available in Oddbins at £16.49).

But the pairing I think worked best was which the domaine has modelled on Banyuls. It's less sweet than port which I think worked particularly well with the salty Roquefort, just adding a nice touch of macerated cherry fruit. I'm sure it would be terrific with dark chocolate too.

Frustratingly the wine only seems to be available in France and Holland but I’d give Banyuls a try as an alternative.

* This is, I have to confess, the second time I’ve eaten foie gras recently, despite my resolution to give it up a couple of years ago. I can resist it on a menu - it's just hard when someone waves it under your nose. I just wish it wasn’t so delicious.