Alcester Gold cheese and truffle honey and Sainte-Croix-du-Mont

Despite the fact that white and sweet wines go just as well with cheese as red wine the idea persists that red is the better pairing

Not when it’s served with honey it isn’t as this delicious match the other day at Wilsons restaurant in Bristol demonstrated.

The cheese was a Vacherin-type cheese called Alcester Gold which is apparently 'made in Hampshire and finished in Oxford'! It was served with truffle honey which both added sweetness and an exotic umami note to the combination

The wine was a sweet wine from one of the lesser known Bordeaux appellations Sainte-Croix-du-Mont: a 2016 from Chateau Le Pin Sacriste. I can’t find it online in the UK but suspect it will be available through RS Wines who supply Wilsons with their wine. If you can’t track it down you could easily substitute Sauternes - and Vacherin for the hard to find Alcester Gold - though I suspect the Sainte Croix is better value.

The combination of the two was really delicious - a reminder of how well sweet wine goes with washed rind as well as blue cheeses

Panko-fried yellowtail with truffle honey and sparkling sake

I honestly didn't know which dish to pick out of this extraordinary pop-up at The Dead Doll’s House Islington last week, hosted by wine importer Bibendum PLB who now also bring in a wide range of sakes. So I’m going for this one because it was the first and one of the simplest.

The meal was prepared in a corner of the private dining room by Endo Kazutoshi, former head sushi chef at Zuma and was one of the most spectacular Japanese meals I’ve ever had.

The dish was a couple of slices of incredibly fresh yellowtail tuna coated in panko crumbs, deep-fried and served with truffle honey and citrus zest.

Deep fried foods are always good with effervescent drinks and this gently sparkling Atago no Matsu sake from Nizawa Brewery was no exception. I knew umami was the perfect foil for sake but the sweetness of the truffle honey with the slightly sweet sake was a revelation.

The Nizawa brewery which was founded in 1873 was badly affected by the Great East earthquake and tsunami in 2011 and had to relocate but now has a state of the art new brewery with equipment that can apparently polish a rice grain down to 8% of its original size!

Apparently Atago no Matsu means ‘waiting love’ which is rather charming. Turns out it’s available on Amazon though at rather more than the prices you find in the states. Good sake has still to become affordable in the UK.

Apologies for rubbish pic. Very low light and a communal sharing board which made photography particularly difficult. (Excuses, excuses ... )

I was invited to the pop-up as a guest of Bibendum.

Vidal icewine with feta and honey cheesecake

It’s always satisfying when a challenging food and wine hit it off and both cheesecake and icewine undoubtedly present their problems.

Cheesecake is super-rich which calls for an accompanying dessert wine with enough weight but also enough fresh acidity to balance it while icewine is so sweet it can easily feel like overkill to even try to eat anything with it.

We were determined to showcase Sarit’s incredibly delicious feta and honey cheesecake though at our Honey & Co wine club on Sunday so took a punt on a Pillitteri Vidal icewine from Canada from - surprise, surprise - Lidl as the other dessert wines we’d tried just tasted thin with it. And it was fantastic! Luscious but not cloying.

You really should make the cheesecake* which is in their first book Honey & Co: Food from the Middle East. And buy the icewine which is a bargainous £14.99.

A word of warning - I can’t guarantee that icewine will go with every cheesecake - I suspect it mightn't if it was a toffee cheesecake and probably not with a chocolate one either but you never know. You can see some of my other cheesecake pairings here - and on the Pillitteri website. (Incidentally they have icewine festivals in Canada. How fun does that sound?)

* the other dessert shown in the pic was a chocolate, orange and pecan slice which went brilliantly well with a Tokaji

Gosnells mead and honey-smoked chicken

Every so often someone trumpets a mead revival but it never quite seems to happen, probably because there’s not enough of it about yet.

But at The Manor in Clapham you can drink it and I suggest you do.

It sailed right through a brilliant fixed price lunch but I’m highlighting two dishes - the honey-smoked chicken with lettuce and borlotti beans (makes sense given mead is brewed from honey but the honey in the dish didn’t overwhelm it) and a spectacular dish of cauliflower with grue de cacao, medjool dates and kefir. Which was basically different textures of cauliflower - raw, roast and whipped into an light-as-air mousse. (No, I didn’t know what grue de cacao was either. It’s cocoa nibs and there’s an excellent explanation on this US site.) I'm going for the chicken as it's easier to replicate at home.

The mead is brewed by Gosnells in Peckham (‘course it is!) and is much drier than mead traditionally was. Think of it like a dry, slightly honeyed perry. Hugely refreshing. You can find a list of other places that stock it on their website.