Strawberries and white zinfandel

I think it’s good to re-examine your prejudices so every so often I go back to wines I don’t much like, white zin being a good example.

I had to taste some as part of research for an article recently and by and large it confirmed my impression that it wasn’t a wine for me. Not with savoury foods in any case but maybe sweet ones would show it off better?

I’d suggested in the past it might go with strawberries and hit on the idea of a perfect snack to pair with it - a riff on scones and cream without having to make the scones.

Ritz crackers, generously spread with Philly or other cream cheese and topped with a couple of slices of strawberry. There's a lovely contrast of salty cracker, smooth creamy cheese and sharp, fruity strawberry. A little freshly ground black pepper if you like, makes it even better IMO.

Serve the white zin (not sure why they don’t call it a rosé these days) well chilled or even over a couple of ice cubes. It’s only around 10% so perfect teatime drinking even if you don’t have a sweet tooth. Berry-topped cheesecakes or Eton mess would would work too.

Hot ham, kumquat relish and saperavi

Given the intense contagioiusness of Omicron it seemed a good idea to have a low key New Year’s Eve celebration this year which took the form of a really lovely kitchen supper with my friend Jenny Chandler and her family.

(Jenny wrote the great book Green Kids Cook: you can find her recipe for Smacked Cucumber and Crispy Green Salad with Zingy Ginger Dressing - which is EXACTLY what I feel like eating after 10 days of stuffing myself - here.)

On the night though she cooked a simple, delicious dish of ham poached in ginger ale with lentils (for luck in the new year), cavolo nero and a fresh zingy kumquat relish. I’d taken along two bottles to compare, a 2014 Cousino Macul Finis Terrae a mature blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and syrah from Chile and, on impulse, a rich Georgian red, a 2018 Orgo Saperavi which went brilliantly well with the dish, especially the kumquat relish. Orangey flavours, it appears, need that kind of vibrant brambly fruit. Dolcetto, I suspect, would also work as would Bonarda.

Incidentally I’d tried the wine a year or so ago and found it slightly disappointing but it absolutely sang on the night.

Other good matches for Saperavi are slow cooked Wagyu beef and, you may be surprised to hear, roast grouse.

What else to match with Christmas ham

Tarte Tatin and Pineau des Charentes

I had some great food and wine matches in Dublin last week but most were predictably good (albarino and seafood, Ribera del Duero and lamb …) so I’m going for this combination from the menu at a brilliant little restaurant called Mae.

The list is drawn from the wine shop below, The French Paradox, which as the name suggests, specialises in French wines. They work closely with the restaurant on the pairings and this was the unexpected finale to the meal.

The tarte tatin was in fact cooked with Calvados which would have been a logical match but the slightly lighter (17%) Merlet Pineau des Charentes from Chateau Chevessac added a contrasting almost vanilla-y sweetness and richness that worked really well. (Pineau des Charentes is a blend of grape juice and cognac which is aged in oak.)

The Good Wine Shop normally seems to have the Merlet though it’s currently out of stock. I reckon a Pommeau from Normandy would work pretty well too.

For other pairings with apples see The best pairings for apple desserts

Cherries (and plums) with Central Otago Pinot Noir

One of the standard ways of devising a wine pairing is to pick out flavours in the wine and put them in the accompanying dish. Not too much or it can cancel out the flavour of the wine but done with skill, as it was by chef Des Smith at The Hunting Lodge, it’s pretty impressive.

The dish was an unctuous chicken parfait served with deep red cherries that had been macerated in pinot and a sliced - and I think also lightly pickled - plum. Two fruit notes that chimed in perfectly with their Central Otago pinot. (And also pretty good, it has to be said with their rather delicious Lagrein, a grape variety of which there is a tiny amount in New Zealand.)

The fact that the pairing was about the fruit not the parfait was underlined by the fact that I had a similar dish at Tantalus Estate on Waiheke the day before - this time made with duck liver and accompanied by pear and ginger which went really well with their pinot gris, which like most in New Zealand is made more in the Alsace style.

Often a successful pairing is more about the accents in the dish not the core ingredient. A smooth rich parfait flatters pretty well everything (except perhaps sauvignon blanc and other acidic whites) - it's the fruit you put with it that suggests the match.