Beef stew and Bordeaux

Coming home to the UK after 10 days in the Caribbean was a bit of a shock to the system especially when we were snowed in on Friday so I leapt at a neighbour’s invitation to come round for a hearty beef stew.

I took round a bottle I’d been tasting, the 2015 Chateau Castera Cru Bourgeois Médoc, which paired with it perfectly although the stew was actually made with beer rather than wine. Although not cheap (£17.50 online at Exel Wines) it was an exceptionally well balanced wine (a blend of 65% Merlot, 25% Cabernet Sauvignon and 5% each Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot) and, it turned out, a platinum medal winner at last year’s Decanter World Wine Awards.

It proves again that classic British roasts and casseroles go really well with claret - which, of course, accounts for its historic popularity in the UK.

For other options with Médoc see What food to pair with red Bordeaux

The picture is a stock image, not the dish we had at my friend's!

Paté en croute and mature Saint Estèphe

Having spent two days in the company of the most high profile advocates of the art of food and wine pairing in France, the Gardinier brothers of Taillevent, I have more outstanding wine matches than I know what to do with this week

But I’m plumping for this one just because it’s an unusual idea to start the meal with a full-bodied red Bordeaux.

The meal was in fact at the more casual offshoot of the restaurant, 110 de Taillevent, whose USP is that it pairs every dish with four alternative wines, ranging from 5€ to 22€ a glass. The paté en croute, a real old-style piece of French charcuterie that apparently takes two days to make, is a staple of both the Paris and London branch.

In Paris it’s paired with one white and two reds, a 2014 Jumilla (no, the wines aren’t all French!), a 2012 white Saint Joseph, a 2010 Moulin-a-Vent and a 2009 Pauillac from Chateau Latour. But because the brothers also own Phélan Ségur in Saint Estèphe and wanted to show the 2008 with it that’s what we had.

And it was just lovely - very smooth, plummy and elegant - and not so overpowering that you couldn’t follow it with another wine, even a white. That owes a lot to the fact that it was a relatively mature vintage, as indeed are many wines on the list. The Gardiniers have their own vast cellar just outside Paris where they age all their wines. (Fascinating. More on this to follow)

It even took the accompanying cornichons in its stride which was quite a feat!

I ate at 110 de Taillevent as a guest of the restaurant.

Venison cottage pie and a ‘lunchtime claret’

This week’s match is a blast from the past - a visit to the historic Rules restaurant in London’s Covent Garden where we tucked into the kind of food you’d have eaten 50 years ago - if not 100.

I hadn’t been for a long while but was inspired to book by a review in the Guardian by my colleague Marina O’Loughlin.

I was going to have steak and kidney pudding but saw this venison cottage pie being borne to another table adorned with an extravagant Elizabethan-style ruff and couldn’t resist it. It was richer than the usual beef version with shredded rather than minced meat and a wonderful golden topping that must have owed a good deal to butter and egg yolk.

The prices on the wine list are somewhat eye-watering (£15.95 for a glass of Joseph Perrier champagne!) so we made the wise decision to go with a carafe of Château le Pey cru bourgeois Médoc which they served in a rather splendid jug.

Coming from the excellent 2010 Bordeaux vintage it was deliciously ripe but still light and fragrant enough to be the perfect foil for the very rich pie - exactly the sort of wine that used to be referred to in the trade as a ‘lunchtime claret’.

The buffers at our next door table looked on approvingly (though were even more impressed by the Gin & It and White Lady we ordered to kick off our meal). Cocktails and claret are the way to go at Rules.

Oh, and Barsac which I can strongly recommend with a steamed syrup sponge. Yes, it was THAT kind of lunch . . .

Mini Yorkshire puddings with rare fillet of beef and Central Otago Pinot Noir

A student gathering is not the first place you’d think of finding a good wine pairing or, indeed, a drinkable wine at all but the talk I gave last week at the University of Bristol Wine Circle produced some great combinations.

The food which was prepared by recently graduated student Emma Barlow was pretty impressive too. I think most of us would feel well pleased with ourselves if we’d managed to rustle up such posh canapés as the mini Yorkshire puddings with rare fillet of beef, creamed horseradish and pea-shoots on the right.

With it we’d paired a mature 2002 Haut-Médoc, Chateau Lamothe-Bergeron which I thought a little austere though have to admit the majority of the students disagreed with me. I preferred a younger, more lively Central Otago Pinot Noir 2010, the Yealands Estate ‘Chancet Rocks’ which confimed my belief that pinot is a particularly good match for fillet steak.

The truth is that both would be fine with beef though I think the Bordeaux would drink better with a roast dinner and the pinot would be the better party wine.

Other good pairings were a Western Australia Sauvignon-Semillon called Allegory with some parmesan and rosemary shortbreads with roast cherry tomatoes, feta and black olives and a 2011 Sauvignon de Touraine with filo tartlets filled with smoked chicken, mango and coriander.

Those Bristol students know how to live . . .