Beef carpaccio and chardonnay

Beef and chardonnay doesn’t sound like an obvious combo at first glance but it depends, as always, how the beef is cooked.

This was in the form of a carpaccio at a Californian Wines tasting and lunch at Smith & Wollensky just off the Strand but the key was not so much the meat as the parmesan, truffle and truffle oil which anointed it all of which are immensely chardonnay-friendly

I tried a couple of different wines with it but particularly liked the Staglin Family’s 2019 Salus estate chardonnay which had a lovely freshness about it that counterbalanced its richness and weight. Sadly at £50 a bottle (at The Champagne Company) or £58 at Oddbins it isn’t cheap - Californian chardonnay, especially from the Napa Valley ,doesn’t tend to be - but you could pull the same trick with a full-bodied chardonnay from elsewhere - and even truffle oil rather than the real thing.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of California Wines

Smoked haddock and apple salad with New Zealand Riesling

I was overwhelmed with good wine pairings last week but given that quite a few were similar to ones I’ve written about before I’m making this my star match.

It was the starter at the Aldeburgh Food & Drink Festival supper - a terrific event laid on by the organisers of the event for the sponsors and speakers. I liked the fact that it was billed as a ‘supper’ rather than a ‘dinner’. Apart from the starter, which was plated up beforehand, the food was served family style down a huge long table (right). It made for a particularly relaxed and convivial evening.

East Anglia is known for its smoked fish so the starter was based on Pinney’s smoked haddock which was served raw like a carpaccio with local salad leaves, a julienne of apple and sour cream.

It was partnered with a crisp, dry Riesling from Forrest Wines which had a note of apple and citrus itself which matched the dish quite beautifully. (Riesling is generally good with smoked fish too). You can buy it from Adnams for £9.99 a bottle or £8.99 by the case.

The main course pairing was excellent too: an almost gamey beef and oyster pie with mash and braised red cabbage with elderberries, matched with a Domaine St Anne 2007 St Gervais, Cotes du Rhone Villages (also from Adnams at £15.99 a bottle.) Another good match to add to the Grenache list.

Sea bass carpaccio and Grüner Veltliner

The other day we went to Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo, an innovative new restaurant in Paris run by the world’s best sommelier in 2004 which has just won a Michelin star. The unusual aspect is that there is a wine rather than a food menu. You choose what you want to drink and they create a dish or a menu around it.

I’ll be writing about the experience in the July issue of Decanter but in the meantime I’ve picked out one pairing which I found particularly striking for my match of the week which was a carpaccio of sea bass, seasoned with lemon peel and with a few lightly dressed leaves piled on top. it was served with a sensationally good wine, a young (2006) but very rich, opulent waxy Grüner Veltliner Honivogl Smaragd from Franz Hirtzberger, a wine I would have thought was too assertive and characterful for such a light dish but which matched it perfectly. A real treat.

Hirtzberger's wines are stocked in the UK by Noel Young Wines though they unfortunately don't appear to have this particular wine at the time of writing.