Pistachio pesto and solaris

One of the best food pairing experiences I’ve come across in a winery is the one laid on by Hebron vineyard in West Wales.

It obviously helps that the co-owner of the vineyard, Jemma Vickers, is also a caterer and that she and her partner, Paul have a garden which produces most of the veg they serve but she lays on regular wine and ‘tapas’ tastings with which you can taste their organic low intervention wines

All the pairings were interesting but the one that particularly stood out for me was a dish of finely sliced raw courgettes with a pistachio pesto (top left) - made without cheese, with pistachios rather than pinenuts and with less basil than in the Ligurian version which made it gently creamy rather than pungent.

It worked brilliantly well with their light, fresh, citrussy almost appley 2021 Solaris which is only 9 1/2%. It’s made in an amphora and is unfined and unfiltered. (And they serve extra ingredients on the side like mayonnaise and chilli so you can see how they react with the wine too.)

They also make a 7% red from rondo - an ABV so low they’re not allowed to call it wine but it still showed really well with some slow cooked lamb and salsa verde.

If you’re in that part of Wales it’s a really charming place to visit and the vineyard where the vines are trained up willow saplings (a strategy to combat mildew) is just gorgeous.

You can buy both wines from their website for £28 and book tours and tastings via this link.

I was given a complimentary tasting and tour by Hebron vineyard.

Salt cod croquettes and zero dosage champagne

Even after all this time we still don’t often think of champagne in the context of a meal but a brilliant Champagne Leclerc Briant dinner I went to last week at Berry Bros & Rudd underlined that we might be missing a trick.

Both the first and main courses went perfectly with the champagnes with which they were paired - the complex, honeyed 2015 Les Basses Prières with an equally rich dish of roast partridge with wild mushroom ravioli and the 2015 La Croisette Brut Zéro with a delicate dish of salt cod croquettes and courgette ‘flavours’ or, perhaps more accurately textures, as they were griddled, puréed and, I think, steamed.

The reason I picked this dish out of the two is that, the deep fried element aside, it was a more unusual combination and because it would have been challenging for most champagnes. The slight saltiness of the cod, which was also served as whole pieces, would have accentuated their sweetness - but this was so ethereal, so clean, and precise it was the perfect match.

It has to be said the champagnes, which I wasn’t familiar with, are wonderful in their own right. The vines are cultivated biodynamically but the winemaker Hervé Justin follows biodynamic practices in the winery too. You can read more about them here.

See also the best wine matches with salt cod

I attended the dinner as a guest of Berry Bros & Rudd

Spaghetti with courgettes, basil, smoked almonds and Bordeaux rosé

I was sent a really unusual rosé the other day from biodynamic Bordeaux wine estate Chateau le Puy, their 2019 Rose-Marie.

Unusual because it was deep pink, almost like the traditional clairet, intensely savoury and most of all because it was a whopping 15%. You could have easily drunk it with a rare steak or a rack of lamb.

In the event I had it with something rather lighter - a dish of spaghetti with courgettes, basil smoked almonds and old Winchester cheese at the hotel I was staying at last week, The Sun Inn in Dedham and it went really well with that too - the slight bitterness of the basil and the smokiness of the almonds bringing out the sweetness of the fruit.

I reckon it would also go with a cheeseboard - in fact it’s basically a red masquerading as a rosé as well it might be given that it’s £49 a bottle (from low intervention wines).

Could you pull off the same trick with a cheaper rosé? Of course you could provided it wasn’t too sweet - I wouldn’t go for a pinot noir rosé, for example but the Wine Society has a delicious dry Bordeaux rose, the Château Bel Air Perponcher Réserve 2020 (currently out of stock but hopefully coming back in as I've only just been sent it) which is a rather more modest £9.50 and 12.5%. Or a Bandol rosé which has a bit more character and structure than a typical Provençal rosé.

See also The best food pairings for rosé

I ate at the Sun as a guest of the hotel and was sent the Le Puy rosé as a sample.

Gazpacho, oak-smoked tomatoes and smoked vodka

I love it when a restaurant lays on an imaginative drink pairing and this was a terrific one from Ben Cooke at Little Gloster just outside Cowes on the Isle of Wight.

He had entered the dish - a yellow gazpacho made with Isle of Wight tomatoes, horseradish and crème fraîche topped with a crostino with mozzarella and oak-smoked tomato into a competition run by Chase Vodka - the Chase Smoky Mary - and won it.

The dish was strongly flavoured enough to carry the powerful flavour of the smoked vodka which was served as a frozen shot. It paired particularly well - as you might expect - with the smoked tomato.

It was only because it was such a good pairing that it pushed aside the other combination I might have made my match of the week - also at Little Gloster: a Ciu Ciu Le Merlettaie pecorino* with a starter of skordalia, grilled aubergines and courgettes. Garlicky dips are great with crisp fresh zesty whites. A Greek assyrtiko would have worked too.

*You can buy the 2014 vintage from The Good Wine Shop at £11.50 at the time of writing.

I ate at Little Gloster as a guest of the restaurant.