Thai green curry and English rosé

Those of you who follow the site closely might have noticed the Match of the Week slot had disappeared. Because I was no longer travelling and eating out I thought what I was drinking with what would be of little interest and that you probably wouldn’t be able to get hold of the bottles I was writing about anyway

How wrong I was!

In fact the limitation of choice has actually sparked a burst of creativity among you all judging by what I’ve seen on Twitter and our own Matching Food and Wine Facebook group* too. And people are digging out many of their most treasured bottles to enjoy with food to match - a tactic for dealing with the lockdown of which I heartily approve

So this week’s pairing is one of those rare partnerships when the wine and the food both rise to greater heights. The dish was a Thai green prawn curry I made with one of the cook-in sauces I’d been sent to try by The Fresh Sauce Co about whom you can read in our 5 reasons slot and the wine an English pinot noir rosé I’d been tasting from Dunleavy vineyards.

Now rosé, I know, is pretty good at handling spice (I also like it with Indian food) but this was a) very dry and b) only 11.5%, too light you would think to stand up to a really punchy green curry sauce. But it not only survived but blossomed, the curry miraculously accentuating its very pretty fruit.

So on the basis of this I’m reckoning most Provence rosés would go with a Thai green curry too but if you want to support English producers you can buy Dunleavy’s rosé for £12.95 with free delivery if you buy 6 or more bottles.

* do join and share what you’re eating and drinking

For other rosé pairings check out The Best Food Pairings for rosé

Image ©iblinova on Adobe Stock cos my late night shot really was tooo dark and blurry and I'd chucked inauthentic broccoli and peas into my curry!

Spicy prawns and Chilean riesling

Last week I hosted a fabulous wine dinner at my local Indian restaurant Nutmeg in Bristol. We’d had the opportunity to have a run through beforehand and I was really happy with all the wines which were chosen in conjunction with their supplier Talking Wines.

If I had to pick out one pairing it would be one of the starters - Madras Jhinga - a king prawn cooked with black pepper and shrimp paste which went brilliantly with a zesty 2016 Novas Grand Reserva riesling from Chile’s Bio Bio valley, proving yet again how well riesling can handle spicy food.

But that’s typically not how Indian meals progress - the prawn was part of a line-up of four starters including an octopus onion bhaji (yes, really! SO good) a chicken tikka and tandoori rabbit. You could of course have drunk the riesling with all of them but I think the Domaine des Tourelles Lebanese rosé we had as another option worked best across the board.

What the tasting underlined is that wine can be just as good if not a better partner for Indian food as lager, especially when it’s executed to this high level and - interesting point to note - when the dishes are dry rather than heavily sauced. That definitely helped.

See also What wine to pair with curry: my top 5 picks

Disclosure: I was paid for conducting the tasting but not required to write this post or undertake social media for the restaurant.

Lamb biryani and grand cru gewurztraminer

Sometimes it’s worth revisiting your prejudices. I’ve never been a huge fan of gewürztraminer with Indian food although it’s an established pairing. It always seems to me slightly jarring, especially with tomato-based curry sauces. But this week I changed my mind.

I took an open bottle to an Indian restaurant* on Friday night and it actually went incredibly well (as did a Brundlmeyer grüner veltliner brought by my mate Martin).

Two possible reasons struck me - the fact that the food was relatively dry - a biryani with dal and saag paneer on the side - rather than several disparate wet curries and that the gewurztraminer was a really good one, albeit incredibly well priced from Lidl. (The 2012 Grand Cru Seinklotz from J P Muller which comes into store in 10 days time on the 26th and which you should snap up if you’re a gewurztraminer fan.) Tasting a really good example of a wine in a style you don’t normally go for can win you round.

I think it comes down to the fact that gewurz, as it’s known for short, is a bit of a Marmite wine. If you love it, you’ll like it just as much or even more with curry; if you don’t spicy food won’t make it taste any more appealing. But give it another try.

* Actually the restaurant itself is a bit of a find. It's called Vittles Curry Nights and is a cafe during the day, up the Filton end of Gloucester Road in Bristol. Nothing fancy but the food rocks!

Photo © H L Photo at fotolia.com - not, obviously, of our meal but a typical Indian spread.

Fish curry and Gruner Veltliner

Last week I hosted a tasting for Bristol-based spice company The Spicery in which we explored a number of different wine pairings for different styles of curry - including an Indian Shiraz!

Fortunately most of the pairings worked the way I'd hoped they would but although we didn’t take a vote on it I think the one people enjoyed most was the Bengali mustard fish with a 2015 Felsner Mooseburgerin Gruner Veltliner (£11.99 from Waitrose)

You would expect a white wine to be the best choice with a fish curry of course and the level of heat was actually quite mild which didn’t present the wine with too many challenges but the grüner was just perfect with enough peppery character of its own to stand up to the spicing but not so much as to overwhelm it.

It is, I’ve remarked before, a super-flexible wine and a reliable choice to turn to when you’re confronted with spicy (but not outrageously hot) food.

For other good grüner veltliner pairings see

The best food pairings with grüner veltliner

* The image above is not the dish on the evening which was just a mini course but a similar Bengali fish curry © mitrarudra @fotolia.com