Sausage rolls and orange chardonnay

I admit orange wine is the last pairing I would have thought of with a sausage roll. Especially a high-end orange wine like Radikon’s.

But credit to Guy Field, the manager of the new Farm Shop wine bar for suggesting it.

Farm Shop is an upmarket food shop in South Audley street with a surprisingly large but cosy wine bar underneath with over 200 wines, many by the glass.

The current list includes the Radikon Slatnik orange chardonnay from the Friuli region of north-east Italy  at £13.50 a glass which is not unreasonable given the average retail price is around £45-48 - rather more from the Farm Shop but we are talking Mayfair.). It’s an intensely rich wine - quite unlike any chardonnay you’ve ever tasted - and utterly delicious. If you’re out of London you can order it online from Buon Vino.

We drank it with the wine bar's take on a ploughman’s (above) which also included ham, cheddar, pickles and a terrific scotch egg and it was a really excellent pairing almost in the way a strong, artisan cider would have been although I hasten to say it didn’t taste remotely cidery. It would work well with other pork dishes too including roast pork

I ate at the bar as a guest of Art Farm.

Pasta with pork, peas and lemon and bardolino

So often a wine takes us through several courses these days (which, of course, is a virtue) but I’m rather arbitrarily spotlighting just one dish on the menu we had at Sonny Stores in Bristol the other night as the ideal match for the Bardolino we were drinking.

It was a pasta called paccheri served with a sauce of pork shoulder (cooked in milk, I would guess), with peas and lemon zest, a light summery combination that went perfectly with the wine

Bardolino is a light fruity red from north-east Italy, made from the same grapes as Valpolicella. (There’s a fuller description of it here)

To be honest it wasn’t the best example - sorry, Sonny’s*, you can do better - but there are more attractive ones out there including this one from Majestic which is very reasonably priced at £7.99 if you buy any six bottles. Which you always should at Majestic as their single bottle prices are generally a bit toppy. Oh, and chill it lightly too

* Their pasta is amazing though which is why I go there so often.

Brined smoked pork and refosco

It’s always a toss-up whether to drink red or white wine with pork. I normally go for white but I really liked this combination of a brined smoked pork chop with a light(ish), slightly smoky refosco at Casa in Bristol the other night.

It was accompanied by yet more pork in the shape of cabbage with pancetta swimming in an indulgently buttery sauce so it could well have been that that fired the pairing too. Anyway, safe to say, refosco and pork.

Refosco is a grape from the Veneto in north east Italy. This bottle which came from Molmenti & Celot, was a 2020 Refosco dal Peduncolo Rosso from just outside Venice had a lovely wild hedgerow berry fruit with a hint of bitterness that made it particularly refreshing. It would also be really good with mountain ham and other salumi (charcuterie).

You can buy it for a very reasonable £12.99 from Wanderlust wine which makes it a bit of a bargain

Casa by the way is a more casual relaunch of what used to be Peter Sanchez-Iglesias top end restaurant Casamia and I like it the better for it. It’s pricey but the food is delicious. (I was a guest btw)

Here's another type of pairing with refosco you might enjoy.

Spicy spam and Mosel riesling

I can’t say spam is high up on my list of things to eat let alone pair with wine but in New York last week I discovered a brilliant match for it at a quirky Hawaiian Lower East Side restaurant called Noreetuh

Mind you it’s hard not to find a good riesling pairing there as the list features one of the best selections I’ve seen along with a terrific range of burgundies thanks to the obsessive interest of its engaging GM and co-owner Jin Ahn.

The combination that particularly stood out was one of the musubi or sushi-like Hawaiian snacks just described as ‘spicy spam’ with pickled jalapeno and soy mayo with the simple but delicious 2021 Julian Heart 1000l Mosel riesling that was on by the glass that day and which I could have happily carried on drinking with the rest of my meal had there not been so many other tempting glasses to choose from.

You can buy it for £27.50 from Natty Boy in the UK or from Princeton Corkscrew if you’re in the US for $22. They (Princetown) also provide a bit of background about the producer, who I shall look out for from now on, on their website

See also The best food pairings for dry - and off-dry - riesling