Okonomiyaki and orange wine

Our experience of Japanese wine is so limited in the UK that it came as quite a surprise to find three wines I would never have expected in a small restaurant and natural wine bar called Pasania in Osaka - a pinot noir, a kerner and an orange koshu.

Koshu is the variety that most often makes it over here but is on the whole relatively unexciting, or has been in the past at any rate. Maybe I need to revisit it as this orange version - Coco Farm & Winery's F.O.S. (fermented on skins) - was luscious, as aromatic varieties so often are.

It went perfectly with the restaurant’s speciality, okonomiyaki - a delicious umami-rich pancake made with cabbage and in this case, pork, squid, shrimp and octopus. (If you're unfamiliar with it - and a Brit - imagine a cross between bubble and squeak and a tortilla.)

Pasania is one of the restaurants in Osaka that is listed on the Star Wine List website. You can find the others here.

By the way you need to make a reservation as they don’t have many seats or take walk-ins. There’s a full explanation on their website  but don’t be put off - it’s worth it, especially if you're a natural wine fan.

Kohlrabi with fig leaf oil and English sparkling wine

A really fascinating pairing from a wine dinner at Skye Gyngell’s restaurant, Spring in collaboration with Domaine Hugo (and their vegetable supplier Fern Verrow)

Domaine Hugo is a Wiltshire based producer - the French name refers back to the time its owner Hugo Stewart was making wine in the Languedoc as Les Clos Perdus. He and his winemaker Daniel Ham make mainly sparkling wine from classic champagne grape varieties but in a natural, low-intervention style.

The wine that was paired with this dish was a rich, almost floral, sparkling brut nature without any added dosage but ripe enough to have just a touch of honey - the element that chimed in perfectly with the fig leaf oil drizzling the plate.

it was a surprise as the dish - which was sensational - was all about the salt-baked kohlrabi and the herbs - but fig leaves have an exotic scent with which the wine chimed in perfectly. Figs and honey - it makes sense when you think about it but it was a very clever, intuitive pairing from Skye.

You can buy the wine, which is unfortunately not cheap, as it’s made in tiny quantities, from the Good Wine Shop for £54 but it is extraordinary. There are links to other stockists on the Domaine Hugo website

More wine dinners are planned at Spring so it would be worth signing up to their mailing list to be kept informed.

I attended the dinner as a guest of the restaurant

Camembert-style cheese and amphora-aged Bacchus

I’ve long felt that white wine is as good, if not a better match for cheese than red but it takes chutzpah to serve it at the end of a wine dinner as Mark Hix and Rob Corbett of Castlewood Vineyard did at an event I took part in last week at The Fox Inn at Corscombe

The cheeses, which came from Hollis Mead organic dairy included Benville, a triple-cream brie-style cheese, Corscombe which is like a camembert and a washed rind camembert-style cheese called Marvel.

None was particularly pungent so caused no problems for this really interesting white, borderline orange wine from Castlewood called Artefact which is aged in amphorae. It’s made from the English grape variety Bacchus but tastes smoother and creamier than Bacchus typically does with more of a pear, quince and sage character than a typically elderflower one.

The bottle and label too are unusual, depicting the events of the 2020 vintage in which it was made (you can find the story of how it came about on Castlewood’s website) Sadly it’s sold out but you might be able to find the odd bottle at the Fox or at The Pig hotels as their sommelier at The Pig in the South Downs, Luke Harbor, was involved in the project. (You could create a similar match though with other skin contact wines and camembert-style cheeses)

You can buy the cheeses online from a site called Harvest Bundle.

For other matches for Camembert-style cheese see What to Pair with Camembert

Thai food and orange wine

Orange wine wouldn’t have been the first pairing I’d have turned to with Thai food but what I love about this business is that there are always opportunities to revise your opinion

It was actually the theme of a tasting organised by Donald Edwards the head sommelier at La Trompette and a past contributor to this website* who convenes a monthly get together for fellow wine professionals around a food and wine theme. (You can keep track of them via the somemondaysarebetter account on instagram)

This one which took place at Smoking Goat Shoreditch really intrigued me. There wasn’t a single wine and food combination that stood out - there were a lot of wines on the table and dishes were served in rapid succession but overall I thought the lighter wines with shorter skin contact, particularly those made from aromatic grape varieties worked best with the salads and grilled dishes and the deeper coloured wines with longer skin contact went better with the meatier dishes like the smoked brisket and long pepper laab and aged beef sirloin with smoked bone marrow and galangal relish. But orange wine certainly has the personality to stand up to the hot/sweet/sour flavours of Smoking Goat’s food.

Most intriguing wine of the tasting? A 2019 Polish roter riesling from a winery called Winnica Silesian whose site is unfortunately only available in Polish. I’m trying to track it down!

* you can read Donald’s article on orange wine here and more suggestions for orange wine pairings here