Chambolle-Musigny and game

No earth-shattering revelations this week, just a reminder that mature red burgundy is a brilliant match for game.

Our cooking group cooked up a feast on Saturday including partridge salad with beetroot and walnuts and an elaborate ‘chartreuse of game, a multi-layered beauty of a dish incorporating several kinds of game (partridge, pheasant and pigeon in this case), wrapped in vegetables (multi-coloured carrots and cabbage).

Neither of the dishes was particularly ‘gamey’ but had a distinctive game character you wanted to respect so thanks to my pal chef Barny Haughton for bringing along a delicate 2000 Chambolle Premier Cru Les Sentiers from Maison Roche de Bellene which was still astonishingly bright and fresh given the vintage. Chambolle is one of my favourite red burgundies especially with lighter game like partridge.

The best wine pairing for partridge

We also had a delicious (but not particularly photogenic) dish of gnocchi with wild boar and venison ragu which went brilliantly with a 2006 Gros Noré Bandol from Provence, an exotic, dark, sensuous red and one of my favourites with richer game dishes. Unfortunately I haven’t been buying it recently so am now clean out of it - I've just had to order a case of the 2012 (from Gauntleys in Nottingham if you want to do likewise)

Top wine and beer pairings for game

Game consommé with a Croatian red

Given that wine dinners are all about combining food and wine it’s not that often that the resulting pairings blow you away but I was hard pushed to pick just one out of the four brilliant matches at last week’s Autumn Delights dinner at Adelina Yard in Bristol.

But I’m going for the first one because it’s unusual to start a meal with a red let alone pair a soup with it.

The dish was slightly more than a soup, mind you - a gorgeous broth with slivers of pigeon, tiny dice of celeriac and some delicious nutty grains accompanied by the MOST HEAVENLY truffle and mushroom brioche.

It was skilfully paired by clever Andy Clarke who was hosting the dinner with a Dimitri Brečević Piquentum Refosk*, an earthy red wine that picked up beautifully on the gamey pigeon but didn’t overpower it. And was impressively followed by a white wine rather than a red, a German Auxerrois from the Pfalz region with an equally gorgeous dish of red ‘carabineros’ prawns with a partridge boudin and heritage carrots.

The next course of Shropshire grouse with Tuscan stuffing and blackberry gel (and accompanying wicked little grouse pies) was back to red again - not the Tuscan red you might expect though but a vivid Samourai Shiraz from Free Run Juice in South Australia. Finally there was a glorious Malvasia called Vigna de Volta from La Stoppa which went perfectly with a dessert of pistachio cake, spiced apple, armagnac and prune ice cream.

So this wine dinner basically broke all the rules - red before white and unconventional natural wines throughout but was an absolute revelation. Great food too from the Adelina Yard team - one of whose founding partners Olivia Barry recently featured on Great British Menu. If you're in Bristol, go!

* You can read more about Brečević and this wine in Doug Wregg's blog on the Caves de Pyrène website.

Roast partridge and Pinot Noir

I’ve already suggested pinot noir as a good pairing for partridge so it was good to find the recommendation vindicated at lunch with Carolyn Martin of Creation Wines at 67 Pall Mall last week.

We’d already tasted our way through their latest releases and I’d earmarked the partridge on the strength of their still very youthful but delicious 2016 Art of Pinot Noir. Interestingly it tasted much smoother and more mellow with the bird - a reflection of how it will round out as it ages.

I also liked the Art of Chardonnay with the dish which worked largely because there was a layer of creamed sweetcorn under the bird and some roasted squash on the side - two ingredients that pair really well with chardonnay

We also had a very interesting tasting of different herbs and flowers with the wines - Martin has done pioneering work on matching flowers and wine which forms the basis for one of the many wine and food tastings at her and her husband Jean-Claude's Hemel-en-Aarde winery. It’s prompted me to start putting down my own thoughts on matching wine and herbs which I’ll post shortly.

For other pairing options with partridge see

The best wine pairings with partridge

I ate at 67 Pall Mall as a guest of Creation Wines

Aged Vouvray and wild boar terrine

I sometimes forget to put the wine first in a pairing when it should be the star of the show and this 1995 Close du Bourg Vouvray from Huet was truly spectacular: still fresh as a daisy but subtly, seductively honeyed it was pure pleasure from the first to last sip.

Still you - or at least I - always need something to nibble with a glass and what my friend Fiona conveniently had to hand was a jar of charcutier Stéphane Reynaud’s wild boar terrine which we had on sourdough toast. Surprisingly mild-flavoured with tiny sweet chunks of carrot it was the perfect foil to the delicate wine.

Even better, I imagine would have been something like a chicken liver or duck liver parfait that would have added the creaminess that Vouvray loves but still a memorable experience by any standard.

Incidentally Stephane Reynaud now has a restaurant in Shoreditch, London called TraTra which sounds a good place to go if you're a charcuterie fan.

For other ideas of wines to pour with paté see

10 Good Wine Pairings with Paté