Vermentino and seafood

Normally this weekly post features a specific dish and wine but vermentino goes with so many fish dishes I think it’s worth flagging up its sheer versatility.

Over the weekend’s visit to the Porto Cervo wine festival we drank it with everything from oysters and raw scampi to grilled seabream to spaghetti alle vongole and it took every one of them in its stride.

If you want to refine the experience you could drink younger, crisper less expensive vermentinos with raw shellfish and cold, fish-based antipasti and more expensive, richly textured ones such as Capichera’s VT or Argiolas Is Argiolas with dishes like this baked seabream we had at Il Vecchio Mulino or lobster rice.

See also this post on other matches for spaghetti alle vongole

I was invited to the Porto Cervo wine festival by Starwood Hotels and ate at Il Vecchio Mulino as a guest of Capichera.

Clams with rice and Verd Albera

What do you drink with tapas? My immediate go-to is sherry but having indulged that whim the other day in the form of a glass of tangy manzanilla amontillada from Lustau’s almacenista collection I unusually followed it up with a glass of white.

We were in one of my favourite tapas bars José in Bermondsey Street - named after its engaging proprietor José Pizarro. After working our way through the usual suspects (pan con tomate, jamon, croquetas* and patatas bravas) we had a couple of seafood dishes - garlicky prawns and clams with rice - that went brilliantly with a glass of 2012 Verd Albera, a blend of grenache blanc and muscat from Spain’s Costa Brava.

Despite the significant amount of muscat (30% I later discovered from importers Indigo Wine) it wasn’t overly perfumed but fresh, crisp and slightly smokey - a deliciously unusual fish-friendly white at a very good price.

*their croquetas are to die for. Some of the best I’ve tasted in or outside Spain.

Plaice with clams, girolles and mash with FMC Chenin

I only have to look at how many of my matches of the week involve fish to realise that it now appeals to me more than meat. Not that I’m anti-meat by any means it’s just that the sort of wine you pair with it is fairly predictable, well-trodden ground.

Piscine pairings are much more intriguing - this week’s match being a case in point. A clever, complex dish of grilled plaice, clams, girolles, celery and mash (right) which was served at a wine dinner at Medlar in Chelsea which featured Ken Forrester’s FMC Chenin from Stellenbosch.

White wine and fish - what’s unusual about that, you might ask? The wine, that’s what. With 6.1g of residual sugar it’s not really a dry white yet with an lively acidity it’s doesn’t taste medium dry or ‘demi-sec’ either - particularly not the most recent 2009 vintage. It’s just incredibly lush - like a great white burgundy or rich dry white Bordeaux.

The ingredient that the chefs had cleverly included in the dish which made the pairing was some buttery mash which keyed in beautifully to all that richness and left the citrussy notes to chime with the seafood. The girolles and the crisp fried onions also helped. I don’t think it would have worked with older vintages such as the 2007 which would be better suited to spicy dishes like butter chicken, Thai-spiced scallops or rich pâtés and foie gras.

I’d heard good things about Medlar which were borne out by this dinner. Well worth the detour to this end of town.

I ate at Medlar as a guest of Enotria who import the FMC and other Ken Forrester wines.