Grappa, chocolate and orange

There were a lot of enjoyable wine matches in Trentino last week - the indigenous wines work really well with the local alpine food - but this unusual grappa pairing at the Campiglio Bellavista in Madonna di Campiglio was the standout combination.

The hotel regularly put out nuts and crisps with the aperitifs but when we went for an after dinner grappa they served a plate of orange slices and dark chocolate buttons instead.

I wouldn’t have imagined they would go with the grappas at all but they actually worked remarkably well as well as adding a bit of ceremony to the serving.

The two grappas we tried were the Casimiro Grappa di Solaris and the Segnana Grappa di Traminer, neither available in the UK so far as I can see. Both were delicious though I preferred the slightly more floral solaris.

The other big plus about drinking grappa which is the go-to drink of the region is that it’s much cheaper than ordering a gin or other spirit. Less than half the price, in fact!

For other chocolate pairing ideas read 3 things you need to think about when pairing wine with chocolate 

Baklava and Moroccan mint tea

Although sweet wines like Samos muscat pair well with baklava sometimes you might not have a bottle or have decided you don’t want a further glass of wine and Moroccan mint tea is just as good.

It’s actually not just mint and hot water.

If you’re making it for one you put a green tea bag and a good sprig of mint and half to one teaspoon of sugar in a mug, top up with just under boiling water and leave for a couple of minutes to infuse. Even if you don’t normally take sugar in your tea, as I don’t, it works, the sugar reducing the slight bitterness of the tea and the mint.

And it’s marvellous with those honey-drenched pastries that they have all through north Africa and the middle east.

Last weekend we served some ready-made ones from Waitrose’s Levantine Table range along with a refreshing orange fruit salad with orange flower water but you can pick them up from any middle-eastern shop.

A simple and refreshing way to end a meal.

Photo by Lottie Griffiths on Unsplash

Eccles cakes and medium-sweet sherry

It’s a bit early to be thinking about mince pies though I’m sure there are some in the shops somewhere but Booths showed off their very tasty festive eccles cakes with a mince pie filling at their autumn tasting the other day.

What to drink with it though? Sauternes proved too light, port too strong and sweet and 15 year old amontillado too dry, in my opinion at least

I found myself yearning for a sweeter sherry - not as sweet as cream though that would work but a rich medium-sweet sherry which I recalled I had at home in the form of William & Humbert’s As You Like It. As its classified as a VORS (Very Old Rare Sherry) the constituent sherries are no less than 30 years old which you might think make it a bit grand for an eccles cake or a mince pie but if it’s a great match, why not?

You could always drink it with a basic off-dry amontillado instead, which I believe Booths stocks in its own label range, or even a cream sherry.

You can buy the As You Like It from Sandhams for £29.99 a 50cl bottle or The Wine Society for £31 - one of the rare occasions when TWS is more expensive than the competition.

For more suggestions as to what to drink with mince pies click here 

And for other amontillado sherry pairings here.

Apricot sorbet and moscato di Pantelleria

There were lots of interesting food and wine matches during my trip to Pantelleria and Etna last week with the Sicilian winery Donnafugata but the most surprising one to me was this pairing of an apricot sorbet and a light moscato, the 2022 Kabir.

Surprising because ice-creams and sorbets are hard to match. In the past I’ve found richer more liquorous wines and even liqueurs work best as you can see from this post.

What wine - if any - goes with ice-cream?

Like their famous Ben Ryé passito di Pantelleria, the Kabir is made from zibibbo but unlike Ben Rye the grapes are not sun-dried resulting in a lighter, more fragrant wine that was just 11.5% but one which worked really well with the sorbet.

What would you pair Ben Ryé with then? Depends a bit on its age. When it’s younger it’s rich and orangey, almost marmaladey so you can pair it with relatively light creamy pastries like cannoli or this ‘bacio Pantesco’, a deep-fried pastry filled with ricotta.

More mature ones develop rich treacley notes that work particularly well with a dark chocolate dessert or dried fruits such as raisins and figs, 

You can buy the Kabir in the UK for £32.95 from Vinum and £39.06 from Shelved Wine. 

(Apologies for the photo but I was a couple of spoonfuls in before I realised what a brilliant match it was!)