Match of the week
Roast lamb and unoaked grenache
Roast lamb goes with practically any red wine you care to drink with it but grenache is a less common pairing than, say, cabernet sauvignon or tempranillo.
It might also strike you as unusual that this dish was from a dinner at Tillingham winery in Sussex who you might have thought would have had their own red but it had sold out so they’d listed this intriguing organic grenache from Domaine Julien d’Abrigeon called Coquelicot (meaning poppy)
According to Vin-Clairs, the online retailer that sells it in the UK it’s made from fruit that used to go to the great Rhône producer J Chave for whom d’Abrigeon used to work.
It’s a beautifully balanced vibrant red that wears its alcohol lightly but had the richness and structure to stand up to the red wine and rosemary jus that accompanied the lamb along with some seared wild garlic, morels and crispy potato skins (as well as mash, which delighted this potato lover!)
It was made with indigenous yeasts and very little added sulphur so basically classifies as a natural wine though it was gloriously clean and pure.
With that back story though it should come as no surprise that it costs £30.40 a bottle although interestingly it’s under £20 in the US (at K & L). Taxes on wine in the UK are brutal.
For other lamb pairings see my Top Wine Pairings for Lamb
And for other grenache pairings, The best food pairings for grenache
A rich jus and Ju de Vie
You’d think a rich winey sauce or jus would be the easiest thing to match with red wine but that isn’t necessarily the case as it tends to compete with it.
In this case the jus was particularly intense - accompanying a braised featherblade of beef in a fantastic dish from Gary Usher’s Elite Bistros at Home takeaway menu.
I was sent it - and a couple of other dishes* - by my pal Mike Boyne of Bin Two in Padstow together with matching wines in frustration at not being able to get together for a meal this year. The Ju de vie is from Julien Mus of Domaine de la Graveirett, a biodynamic producer in the Rhone and classified as a vin de France due to the unusual blend of merlot, marselan, grenache and mourvèdre.
Although it was 14% there was a freshness and savouriness to it that offset the sweet richness of the sauce (also due to being aged in concrete tanks rather than oak) and I was thinking that if you’d served a Napa cabernet or Barossa shiraz with it it would just have been too much.
It also went really well with a coq au vin I made the following night.(Yup, it has been a really indulgent couple of days and Christmas hasn’t even started yet. Still, we all need cheering up this year, don’t we?)
You can buy the Ju de Vie from Mike at Bin Two for £15.50.
* Braised octopus with morcilla and chickpeas with a brilliant Georgian orange wine called Teliani Valley Kakhuri No 8 and banana cake with butterscotch sauce and candied pecans with the 2017 MAD Tokaji late harvest wine both great pairings too.
RSS
Most popular
.jpg)
9 great wine pairings for duck (updated)
My latest book
How to Drink without DrinkingNews and views
.jpg)
Fine Wine and Fast Food
About Fiona
About Matching Food & Wine
Work with me
