Aged Vouvray and wild boar terrine

I sometimes forget to put the wine first in a pairing when it should be the star of the show and this 1995 Close du Bourg Vouvray from Huet was truly spectacular: still fresh as a daisy but subtly, seductively honeyed it was pure pleasure from the first to last sip.

Still you - or at least I - always need something to nibble with a glass and what my friend Fiona conveniently had to hand was a jar of charcutier Stéphane Reynaud’s wild boar terrine which we had on sourdough toast. Surprisingly mild-flavoured with tiny sweet chunks of carrot it was the perfect foil to the delicate wine.

Even better, I imagine would have been something like a chicken liver or duck liver parfait that would have added the creaminess that Vouvray loves but still a memorable experience by any standard.

Incidentally Stephane Reynaud now has a restaurant in Shoreditch, London called TraTra which sounds a good place to go if you're a charcuterie fan.

For other ideas of wines to pour with paté see

10 Good Wine Pairings with Paté

Fonduta with white truffles and Barbera d’Alba

There’s only one pairing I could focus on this week given that I was in Piemonte and that is white truffles. What was the best match? Incredibly hard to say!

There were so many amazing ones - tajarin, the fine, intensely eggy pasta, carne cruda (the Piedmontese version of steak tartare) and a ‘timballo’ of autumn vegetables and truffles among them - but the one I think I’ve got to go for is the fonduta, a wonderful rich eggy fondue lavishly scattered with truffle shavings we had at Trattoria della Posta at Monforte d’Alba which I reviewed here.

I remember I picked out almost exactly the same dish six years ago when I last visited Piedmont though then we had it with one of the local white wines, a Roero Arneis - maybe because the dish also included cardoons.

It is, however, more usual for the Piedmontese to serve a young red wine with a white truffle dish, most commonly a Barbera or a Dolcetto rather than the Barolo I suggested back then. (Barolo would work equally well though they tend to save it for the main course). This time we drank a 2009 Barbera d’Alba Codamonte from Giuseppe Mascarello.

You could, of course, drink white wine with truffle dishes especially with carne cruda - with which we had a rich Gaja Chardonnay. And champagne though that’s obviously not traditional in the region.

Roast goose with Nebbiolo

As a chef friend who recently took over a farm had some geese to get rid of we had goose for our main Christmas meal this year - stuffed somewhat improbably with hay (long story. Not such a good idea!)

We picked out a bottle we’d recently bought from another friend Marc Millon who runs a small wine business called Vino importing Italian wines from small growers. It was a 2005 Langhe Nebbiolo from Cascina Fontana, a Barolo producer with whom they’ve been dealing for years. You can read more about them here
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It was just perfect with the goose, having the acidity to cut through the fat and a lovely dark, damsony flavour - still fruity enough at 4 years old to take on the accompanying red cabbage but not so intense as to overwhelm an already full-flavoured plateful. It also went very well with the pork and fennel rillettes for which I posted a recipe the other day.

I don’t know how Vino’s stocks of the 2005 stand but the 2007 vintage is currently selling in Berry Bros & Rudd for £20, quite a bit cheaper than the £33.50 you would pay for the Fontana's Barolo.

Chocolate terrine with Brachetto d'Acqui 2007

It’s a mystery to me why we need a Chocolate Week. Surely no-one (except aberrants like myself who have an inexplicable preference for potatoes) needs encouraging to eat chocolate. But there we have it and you’ll find plenty of opportunities to enjoy your favourite food in the country’s classiest chocolate shops over the next few days.

So this week’s match had to be chocolate-related really and the best match I’ve had recently was at the Piemontese wine dinner I mentioned the other day - a rich chocolate terrine with roasted hazelnuts (above) with a Brachetto d’Acqui from Contero.

Now I’ve written many times before about the virtues of sweet reds with dark chocolate but it was extraordinary how well this very light (5.5%) sparkling dry red paired with such a rich dessert thanks to a bitter cherry twist that picked out the accompanying dark berry sauce quite beautifully. I suspect it would also go well with desserts that contained blackberries. You can find it in one of this country’s most interesting wine merchants The Flying Corkscrew and also in everywine.co.uk which charges £75.04 for a case of six.

If you want to pursue your passion for chocolate you can find out more about what events are being held this week in the events section of www.chocolate-week.co.uk. There seem to be tastings of chocolate with every conceivable beverage including wine, cognac, tea, sake and even a cheese and chocolate matching though I’m not quite so sure about the wisdom of that one . . .