Smoked trout and char with horseradish and Gemischter Satz

Last week I was in Berlin though the city seems to be more in love with Austrian than German wines these days.

This combination was one I tried at a winemakers evening at the Austrian wine bar Freundschaft which showcased wines from Weininger and Hajszan Neumann.

The fish was lightly smoked (I’d guess) and served as an open sandwich topped with dill, pickled radishes and horseradish - a particularly popular condiment in Berlin. (A delicious combination it wouldn’t be too hard to replicate)

It went well with the three or four wines we tried with it but the standout combination was a 2023 Weininger Ried Ulm Nussberg Wiener Gemischter Satz,

Normally Gemischter Satz, a Viennese field blend made from several different grape varieties, is a light wine you’d drink in a heurige (the local bars that ring Vienna) but this was a serious example from a single vineyard that could easily have passed for a white burgundy.

The vineyard is cultivated biodynamically and planted with Pinot Blanc, Neuburger, Welschriesling, Grüner Veltliner, Sylvaner, Zierfandler, Rotgipfler,Traminer and Riesling - which were picked by hand and vinified together.

You can buy the 2022 vintage in the UK for £30 from London End Wines.

See also this previous match of the week of sauerkraut and orange wine and this post on the best pairings with grüner veltliner.

Hake with white asparagus, smoked caviar and gamay

You might instinctively reach for a glass of white wine with hake but red wine can work equally well. And not only when it has a red wine sauce.

This dish at The Blue Pelican in Deal which, despite the name, is an excellent Japanese restaurant, came with white asparagus, smoked Petrossian caviar and a sauce which I’m guessing included miso and mirin.

It was richly umami anyway which made it a an obvious pairing with the orange Beaujolais they had listed on the short, smart wine by the glass list.

But it was the red - a Domaine St Cyr ‘La Galoche’ Gamay from the same region that was the greater surprise, complementing the hake without overpowering the delicate flavour of the asparagus or the caviar.

It was, also a great match with a dish of pork belly with cockles and sansho pepper but then gamay almost always works with pork.

Although we kicked off with a white - an A Desconhecida Arinto blanco - you could perfectly well drink a red like this throughout a Japanese meal.

You can buy the La Galoche from Uncharted Wine for £20.29 or £21.95 from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh

For other Beaujolais pairings see Top Food Matches for Beaujolais (and other gamay) 

Condrieu and Cornish Brill salan

The idea still persists that wine doesn’t go with Indian food but when the flavours are subtle and the dishes presented individually you can pair some of the best wines in the world with it.

This was a dish at an amazing Indian restaurant in London called Bibi whose chef Chet Sharma has a fine dining background so it was really only the sauce they needed to take account of in their accompanying wine flight.

It was what’s called a salan which, according to Wikipedia, is “a mix of green chilli peppers, peanuts, sesame seeds, dry coconut, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic paste, turmeric powder, bay leaf, and thick tamarind juice”. I don’t know how chef Sharma made his but the peanuts and the coconut were the dominant notes. It wasn’t hot but was quite punchy.

With it we drank a glass of 2023 Condrieu Les Vallins from Christophe Blanc. A young wine but already richly expressive with a full, fruity (mainly apricot) flavour. (Condrieu is made from Viognier so if you were trying this type of dish at home and couldn’t run to Condrieu you could try other viogniers.)

You can buy it for £57 from Hedonism

For other viognier pairings see My favourite pairings for Viognier 

And for less usual ideas of what to pair with Indian food see here.

I ate at Bibi as a guest of the restaurant.

Langoustine with calamansi and a Greek white

This week’s match of the week is the perfect illustration of the fact that the flavours of a dish that should suggest a wine pairing as much as the main ingredient.

The dish in question was a variant of one of the regular items on the menu at the uber-fashionable, Michelin-starred Dorian in Notting Hill: a tempura langoustine tail, with pale ale and ginger mayo, calamansi (a Filipino citrus fruit that’s like a cross between a lime and a mandarin) and chilli sugar. 

I wouldn’t have been sure which way to go with it but the sommelier came up with an excellent pairing of a Cretan white wine, Dafni, from Lyrarakis’ Pasarades vineyard which had citrussy notes of its own that echoed those of the sauce.

White Bordeaux and albarino would have worked too, I reckon.

You can buy the 2023 vintage from Hedley Wright in the UK for a very reasonable £13.99 and for £15.99 from Cambridge Wine Merchants which is still good value for a wine of this quality.

For lobster pairings (which are similar to langoustine) see Wine with Lobster: 6 of the best pairings