Indian-spiced soft-shell crab and English sparkling rosé

You might have thought English sparkling wine and in fact English wine in general was a bit delicate for Indian food but this pairing at Trishna last week was spot on.

Crab of course goes well with rosé anyway and sparkling wine is great with deep-fried food so it wasn’t a massive leap to pair the two when spices were involved especially when they were as subtle as at Trishna which has a Michelin star

The wine was one of the most elegant English rosés, Busi-Jocobsohn’s 2019 Rosé Brut which has a lowish dosage of 6.3g which counters the idea that you need wine with a touch of sweetness with spicy food.

However it is a single vineyard wine and slightly fuller and riper than the extra brut rosé of theirs I’ve tasted before which helped it stand up to the dish (and makes for more pleasurable drinking too)

You can buy it from their website busijacobsohn.com for £39 - which is good value for a sparkling rosé of that quality.

For other wine and crab pairings see The Best Wines to Pair with Crab

I ate at Trishna as a guest of Busi-Jacobsohn.

Fresh crab and a citrussy spritz

Even wine writers have to take a day off occasionally, especially if they’re lunching with a teetotaller, but it’s always a bit of a challenge finding a drink that goes as well with food as wine

A crisp dry white would always be my first choice with crab (see my list of pairings here) but I had ordered a 'temperate' cocktail, the Mellow Yellow Spritz, with my crab on toast at Hawksmoor Guildhall and it went really well

It’s based on an aperitif called Botivo which admittedly sounds a bit like a tropical disease you might want to inoculate yourself against but it made a refreshingly citrussy spritz along with lemon, elderflower and soda water. It’s actually 0.1% so not totally alcohol-free but so long as you're not avoiding alcohol on principle or for health reasons, as near as makes no difference

The crucial thing - for me at least - was that it was refreshingly dry and in no way interfered with the delicate flavour of the crab. You can find a similar spritz on their website.

I ate at Hawksmoor (with my daughter) as a guest of my son!

Crab with kombucha

It’s hard to pick out just one pairing from the alcohol-free menu I had at La Dame de Pic in London the other night - the 2 Michelin starred restaurant run by Anne-Sophie Pic. I can honestly say I didn’t miss alcohol during the meal. The pairings, which were devised by head sommelier Elise Merigaud, were perfectly suited to Pic’s light, supremely elegant food.

I’m going for the crab with kombucha because it’s a combination you could replicate if not to her standard. The crab dish was a couple of incredibly fine discs of pastry sandwiching a creamy slightly spicy filling with Vietnamese coriandere and a touch of burnt lemon which was echoed by the refreshingly tart LA Citrus Hop Kombucha.

The great thing is that it’s a product you can easily buy (online from the Suffolk-based producer) for £30 for a case of 12 bottles) I reckon it would go well with other seafood too.

The other combination that stood out was Pic's signature dish of wild seabass and caviar with the Eins Zwei Zero riesling an alcohol-free wine that’s never really appealed to me until now but which worked really well.

Again the dish, which involves a light-as-air blanket of foam, would be way beyond most of us but you could try the drink with other fish dishes (I reckon it would work with smoked salmon). You can buy it in Waitrose for £6.99.

Obviously the meal was not a cheap experience - the menu we were offered was £140 with pairings on top of that but if you didn’t drink and wanted to splash out for a special occasion it would be perfect. (Note that some of the dishes are made with alcohol though you might be able to get the kitchen to tweak them.

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of La Dame de Pic

Crab, chervil and Smederevka

There were two wine pairings in contention for my match of the week slot this week. The other being the excellent combination of mature cheddar with Washington State cabernet but that’s not rocket science and this was the more intriguing discovery.

It stemmed from the fact that I suddenly have an abundance of herbs including chervil which I’ve managed to grow successfully for the first time and am flinging into everything. It has, I’ve discovered, a wonderful affinity with fresh crab with which I was planning to do something clever but decided in the end to serve straight with a squeeze of lemon, mayo and chervil sprinkled lavishly on top.

Having tried a youngish chablis (a bit of a disappointment) and a New Zealand sauvignon blanc (too overpowering) I found the perfect match in a crisp, citrussy white called Smederevka Belo 2019 12% from Tikves in Macedonia which had marked herbal notes of its own. (Smederevka is the grape variety, Tikves is the place)

It’s great value too. You can buy it for £8.45 from the The Whisky Exchange or £48.18 for six and from a number of other indies including Noble Green.

For other crab pairings see The Best Wines to Pair with Crab

I was sent the smederevka as a sample by The Whisky Exchange.