Paul A Young Shropshire Blue and walnut chocolate truffles with Taylor’s First Estate Reserve port

Port and stilton is one of the classic wine pairings but does it work if you pair a port with a blue cheese chocolate?

I’m pleased to report on the strength of a fascinating tasting with Paul A Young at cookery writer Thane Prince’s cookbook club at The Drapers Arms last week that it does.

The chocolate was a seasonal addition to the Paul A Young range - a gorgeous gooey Shropshire Blue, walnut and cider (I think*) truffle with the flavour of the cheese just coming through at the end. (Too often the chocolate gets lost in the cheese.)

And the port? A bit of a surprise. I’d thought a younger port might be too spiritty but the ripe berry flavours of the Taylor’s Reserve (widely available at around £12) were exactly right with the truffle - and with a beautifully crafted dark Venezuelan* chocolate bar which wore its 82%* cocoa solids incredibly lightly. Ruby port and dark chocolate is, of course, a winner too.

Two other matches stood out in the tasting: the Gonzalez Byass Solera 1847 sherry with very dry, intense cocoa nibs which brought out delicious candied fruit flavours in the wine and a lovely, apricotty Vistamar Late Harvest Moscatel from Chile (the bargain of the evening at £4.99 currently from Majestic) with the plain truffle bar.

Three wines I expected to shine didn’t do quite as well - Waitrose’s Seriously Plummy Maury which was a bit overwhelmed by the truffles, a Rutherglen Muscat (too sweet - would have been better with a pecan pie) and a Blandy’s madeira (nice but not as impressive as the sherry). The salted caramels defeated everything we threw at them. I think they needed an armagnac or cognac.

Incidentally if you want to have a crack at making a slightly simpler version of Paul’s truffles there’s a recipe here.

* There is a certain vagueness about this post. Due to extreme over-excitement about the chocolates and being pre-occupied with serving the drinks I forgot to take notes!

Guacamole, salsa and a citrussy pale ale

Last Friday night Helen, our designer, and I had a bit of a works outing to our colleague Monica Shaw's who works on the nuts and bolts of the website. She cooked up an amazing Mexican feast of which this was just one element but it was striking how much better the whole meal went with beer than with wine.

It wasn’t that the wine was bad. We had a deliciously limey Peter Lehmann Wigan riesling which went extremely well with the guacamole too - as did a Sauvignon Blanc and a new English rosé from Dunleavy vineyards just outside Bristol.

But the beers we had - a selection from Helen’s other clients Wild Beer Co, Arbor Ales and the Bristol Beer Factory - were just so easy with the widely varied ingredients and dishes we threw at them.

I’m singling out the guacamole (which was properly chunky) with our first and second beers, Wild Beer Co’s intensely hopped Fresh and Madness IPA because they both had a citrussy edge that went brilliantly with the lime and coriander in the dip.

We also had roast squash-stuffed tamales with mole poblano, a big roast corn and avocado salad, refried beans, stuffed jalapenos, tomato salad and homemade pickles a punchy/spicy combination which went really well with an Arbor Yakima Valley American-style IPA. (A red wine big enough to handle all those powerful flavours wouldn’t have been as refreshing)

I can’t pretend we found a beer to go with the chilli-spiked mango fruit salad and ice-creams and sorbets but we finished with a flourish with some intensely chocolatey truffles with candied chillies and the Bristol Beer Factory’s raspberry stout - an unlikely but knockout combination.

It was the big flavours in the beers that carried the day too. Light lagers and more traditional ales wouldn't have worked as well.