Cassoulet and red Bordeaux

One of the questions I regularly get asked is what to drink with a special bottle. The general expectation is that I’ll suggest a meal of Michelin-starred quality but as this match of the week shows a rustic dish will do very nicely.

The wine was a 2009 Cuvée Barthélemy from a biodynamic Bordeaux producer Château le Puy whose wines I’ve written about before. Although they could legitimately be classified as ‘natural’ they don’t taste at all funky but smooth, polished and, in the case of this particular bottle, still surprisingly vibrant for a 12 year old wine.

I pulled one out to drink with a slow braised lamb dish from the Towpath café cookbook I made on Saturday night which includes 3 heads (heads not cloves) of garlic but is cooked for so long it doesn’t taste overly garlicky.

Even better I drink the remainder of the bottle with an improvised cassoulet I made with some of the leftover lamb, some Judion beans, half the remaining confit garlic, a duck leg I serendipitously found in the freezer and some mini chorizos which would no doubt outrage any self respecting Toulousian.

Anyway the Barthélemy was gorgeous with it, retaining all its richness and suppleness and handling the (admittedly) mild heat of the chorizo really well. A real treat but sadly not a cheap one. The cost of the more recent vintages at Buon Vino which stocks most of their range is £125-145 a bottle but their more affordable cuvées should work too.

For other cassoulet pairings see Six of the best wine pairings with Cassoulet. You'll find the cassoulet recipe I normally make rather than this cheat's version here.

Challans Duck and Château le Puy

It’s easy to be so cocky about a wine pairing that you cease to leave your mind open to other possibilities. So duck has always led me to burgundy (or other pinot noir) rather than Bordeaux. But last week’s spectacular meal with Château Le Puy at Hélène Darroze at the Connaught convinced me that mature Bordeaux can be just as delicious an option.

It wasn’t just any old duck mind you but a Challans duck, much prized in France for its tenderness and depth of flavour. It was served with endive and, I subsequently discovered from the menu, rhubarb though that wasn’t really detectable in the dish.

9 great wine matches for duck

And the deep, sensuously velvety wine, the 2009 vintage of the Chateaux single vineyard Barthélemy for which they are trying to get a separate appellation, would have shone with practically anything to be honest. The vineyard is farmed biodynamically and the wine made with without sulphites, fining or filtration. (I’d love to give it blind to anyone who dismisses all natural wine as faulty or ‘cidery')

There were some other fascinating wines and pairings during the meal too - their extraordinarily deep-coloured rosé 'Rose Marie' with a dish of lobster with morels and vin jaune, a chocolate and coffee dessert with a wine, Detour des Isles, which is treated like a madeira and travels round the world before being bottled and the discovery that the 2015 vintage of their white Bordeaux Marie Cecile which is 100% semillon was the perfect match for our cheeseboard.

The experience had a particular poignancy for me in that my late husband introduced me to Le Puy and we shared the fabled 2003 at one of our favourite restaurants La cour de Rémi which was always our final stop in France at the end of the summer holidays. He would have loved this extraordinary dinner.

I ate at Helene Darroze as a guest of Chateau le Puy. The restaurant has a vertical of of their cuvée Emilien on the wine list.

10 top food pairings for South African wines

If you’ve visited the Cape Winelands you’ll know what an amazing food and drink scene it has but you may still wonder what sort of dishes to order in a restaurant or to pair with South African wines at home.

Many of course are obvious. On my recent trip there was a LOT of lamb and cabernet sauvignon but you don’t need me to tell you what a classic pairing that is. Chenin blanc and Cape white blends also stood out for their versatility but the big surprise to me was how well the country’s rich chardonnays went with a lot of the food (including an umami-rich beef broth). And the new bright, juicy grenaches and cinsaults are just delicious with meat and fish alike.

So here are 10 pairings that stood out for me and which could well work for you too.

1. Croissants and vintage fizz

We all know champagne is a good accompaniment for brunch but have you stopped to analyse why that might be? The answer according to a breakfast tasting at the Orangerie at Le Lude is that croissants are brilliant with bubbly, especially if it's a toasty vintage MCC* like the Le Lude 2012 (available in the UK from Hard to Find Wines). Weekend breakfasts may never be the same again . . .

* méthode cap classique - South Africa's name for the champagne method

2. Melon salsa and chenin blanc

One of the many good matches at Creation which is known for its imaginative food and wine pairing programme was an appetiser of warm flatbreads with a tomato, cucumber and melon salsa - the melon being the element that made the chenin sing. It's not available, so far as I can make out, in the UK but you can find their very attractive chardonnay and pinot noir.

3. Lemongrass and ginger fish croquettes with sauvignon blanc

If you’re in Constantia you’ll no doubt be drinking sauvignon blanc and while it obviously goes with all kinds of seafood it was the lemongrass and ginger top notes in these more-ish croquettes at Catharina, the fine dining restaurant at Steenberg, that totally hit the spot with Cape Point's 2017 Isliedh, their top-of-the-range sauvignon blanc.

4. Watermelon and riesling

You might think of pairing the rather fancy ‘compressed’ watermelon (a bit like a fruit-based carpaccio) at Jardine restaurant in Stellenbosch with sauvignon blanc - and that would work - but, more unexpectedly, it was really good with Jessica Saurwein’s deliciously crisp Chi riesling from Elgin (which is available in the UK from Swig and Handford Wines).

5. Shellfish and semillon

Faced with a rich seafood dish my mind turns immediately to chardonnay - especially if it’s accompanied, as this glorious dish of hake and shellfish (pictured above) at Vergelegen’s Camphors restaurant was, with sweetcorn, but the standout combination for me was with the 2014 vintage of the winery’s luscious sémillon. Just stunning. (The 2015 and 2016 are quite widely available in the UK)

6. Cauliflower and chardonnay

I toyed with the idea of including the pumpkin fritters and custard we had at lunch at Rietvallei wine estate in Robertson (with the savoury dishes, not as dessert!) which turned out to be a perfect match for their 2017 JMB chardonnay but decided you might baulk at trying it out on your friends. So I’m going - among the many great chardonnay pairings I encountered on the trip - for the braiied cauliflower with za’atar, kimchi and parmesan we were served at Protegé, an excellent new restaurant in Franschhoek. It went particularly well with Chris and Andrea Mullineux’ 2016 Leeu Passant chardonnay (the '15 is at Handford Wines) which proved capable of handling a fair bit of spice. (It was brilliant with the crayfish with curried piccalilli too.)

7. Gazpacho and rosé

One of three stunning starters we shared at Babel, the restaurant at design-conscious Babylonstoren. It was actually described as a ‘chilled summer Caprese-style soup with Fior de Laatte cheese and beetroot and red basil sorbet' and was just delicious - as they suggested - with their mourvèdre rosé (and with the two starter salads we had too).

8. Seared duck and fig salad and grenache (and pinotage too, come to that)

There are not many red wine pairings in this lineup, I know (South Africa is still more of a white wine country) but the bright, breezy incarnations of grenache and pinotage they’re making up in Swartland are just as good a match for duck as the usual suspect, pinot noir. The two that particularly stood out for me at Bill & Co in Malmesbury were the 2017 Grenache and Pinotage from David & Nadia which are available in the UK from Masters of Malt or by the case from Justerini & Brooks.

9. Charcuterie and Cinsault

The most consistently smashable red I came across in the 10 days I was in the Cape was cinsault which is being made very much in the Beaujolais style. So it stands to reason it would go with a charcuterie plate like the one at Joostenberg’s very appealing bistro (they also have a great deli on site too). The wine - which is made from old vines - is released under the Myburgh Bros. label - sadly not available in the UK at the time of writing.

10. Cheese and straw wine

I had some good pairings with straw wine - the grape-based dessert at Camphors again was lovely - but the big surprise was how well it went with cheese - in this particular instance a deeply coloured 2013 Boplaas from the Klein Karoo I had at my Twitter friend @bigbigjoe's. (The cheeses were a local gouda-style cheese called Williston from Langbaken cheeses, a French Vacherrouse and a manchego-style cheese from Spain made from a mixture of sheep & goat milk.)

If you're in the Cape Winelands wineries that do pairings particularly well are Creation, Pierneef at La Motte and Vergelegen’s Camphors.

I visited South Africa as a guest of Wines of South Africa.

Duck casserole with Vilarnau Els Capricis Cava

There’s a certain repertoire of ingredients and dishes that are regularly paired with vintage champagnes and other sparkling wines - luxury foods like lobster, turbot, sweetbreads and even roast chicken but until last week’s trip to the Cava region I would never have thought of pairing them with a casserole

The region has a new classification for its top wines which is Cava de Paraje Calificado. Wines that qualify must meet strict requirements including that they must come from a single vineyard, from vines that are a minimum of 10 years old and must be aged on their lees for at least 36 months

The Vilarnau Else Capricis 2014 that was paired with this dish doesn’t currently have CPC status but could well get it if it is approved by the panel which is made up of independent judges as well as industry professionals.

It’s made from the local Xarel-lo grape variety and is fermented in 250 litre chestnut wood barrels giving it a really lush, rich character that is surprising in so young a wine.

Like other top cavas we tasted it’s also a Brut Nature - i.e. a sparkling wine without any added dosage (the sweet liquor with which most sparkling wines are topped up)

But duck casserole? Well, it's a local speciality and much loved in the region - Bruno Colomer Marti, the winemaker of Cordoniu also told us he liked to drink Paraje cava with a casserole. The key I think was that the dish was rich, slightly fatty and a touch sweet thanks to the prunes that were also an ingredient. (I reckon you could have added chestnuts too)

Champagne, even with dosage, would have been too dry I think. Vintage cava could and did cope.

I travelled to Penedes as a guest of DO Cava.