Lobster macaroni cheese and Ruinart champagne

When I flicked through the pictures I’d taken of the wines I’d drunk over Christmas and the New Year I realised there was a LOT of champagne. Partly because I’d been given or shared some rather nice bottles but equally because champagne goes with practically everything from oysters to shepherds pie (as the novelist Jeffrey Archer famously established).

This year I drank it with the turkey (Cristal, mind you*), shedloads of smoked salmon and some very good 3 year old parmesan (some 1998 Gosset Celebris which amazingly still had some fizz in it) but the best match of all was a glass (or two) of Ruinart with the lobster mac’n’cheese I ordered on room service at the Rosewood on the annual 24 hour post Christmas break I spend with my daughter (see my blog for how this new Christmas tradition came about).

I guess most of you would instinctively reach for a red with a mac'n'cheese (Saint Emilion being a favourite) but like many cheesy dishes it’s actually better with a white, chardonnay being my normal go to. But lobster, being luxurious, somehow merits going the extra mile with a bottle of bubbly, vintage for preference.

The best wine - and other drinks - to match with macaroni cheese

Wine with lobster: 5 of the best pairings

* in part payment for judging the Louis Roederer awards, in case you think I’m made of money …

Macaroni cheese and Alsace Riesling

As those of you who follow me on Twitter (as winematcher) will know I’ve been in New York this week and have a huge number of interesting wine and other matches to tell you about but the most unexpectedly successful - and therefore my pairing of the week - was a match of macaroni cheese and Alsace Riesling.

My normal preferred pairing with mac and cheese as it’s called over the pond is a buttery Chardonnay or a soft red like a St-Emilion but this Riesling, suggested by the sommelier John Tarleton at Artisanal, was like eating it with a crisp juicy apple (an odd idea but you’ll have to trust me, it works!)

It has to be said the macaroni cheese was creamy rather than tremendously cheesy and the Riesling a good bottle: the 2006 Les Princes Abbs from Schlumberger which is available from Henderson Wines in the UK - and I’m sure from other independent merchants - at about £13 a bottle. Their website also recommends it with pan-fried scampi.

Artisanal, which is a cheese-focussed brasserie, was opened 8 years ago by one of New York’s best known chefs Terrance Brennan. It also offers cheese and wine flights.

Macaroni cheese and Montagne-St-Emilion

This week is British Cheese Week - and, by the looks of it, the start of autumn proper - so what better time to rustle up a macaroni cheese (or mac and cheese as they call it in the US)?

I made one for the first time for a while the other day for a new book on cheese I’m writing and reminded myself just what perfect comfort food it was.

I matched it - with some trepidation - with a red Bordeaux, a 2005 Château Gachon Cuvée St Georges Montagne-St-Emilion (£11.99 from Laithwaites) I’d been tasting but it hit the spot perfectly.

That doesn’t follow that any Bordeaux would work - some would be too tannic, others too lightweight but this was an exceptionally supple, typically ‘Right Bank’ blend of Merlot (70%), Cabernet Franc (20%) and Cabernet Sauvignon, (10%) with very well integrated tannins. It picked up beautifully on the creamy sauce and crispy topping - but then it would have worked with a lot of things, including turkey if you’re starting to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas.

A real crowd pleaser - and I don’t mean that in a derogatory way!