Roast chicken and ‘Saison’ cider

Even though we might enjoy a glass of cider down the pub it’s not often, I suspect, we open a bottle for friends but given the number of interesting ciders around and the fact they’re bottled in full-size sharing bottles we really should.

I took along this bottle of Find & Foster’s Saison Pomme which is made in the rich saison beer style out of Devon apples when I heard my mate Kate was cooking roast chicken and it went perfectly.

Find & Foster specialise in making ciders from ‘forgotten’ orchards and in a natural wine style. The name Saison, they explain, “refers to the seasonal farmhouse ale brewed by farmers to quench the thirst of their workers during the harvest. Historically iit underwent a long slow fermentation fuelled by yeasts that were native to the farm.”

This version too is made with wild yeasts and unfiltered which gave it a slightly cloudy appearance and preserves its deep apple flavour.

It would be great with roast or grilled pork or a good cheddar too.

You can buy it for £9.40 from Native Vine, £9.95 from wineandgreene.com and £12.95 from Hop, Burns & Black though at some of these it appears to be temporarily out of stock.

See also 8 great wine (and other) matches for roast chicken

The photo above isn't of Kate’s chicken as we were eating outside by candlelight and it was too dark to get a shot!

Roast poulet de Bresse and aged Jura chardonnay

Roast chicken with chardonnay - what’s new about that I hear you say? Well, nothing, obviously but imagine some of the BEST chicken you’ve ever eaten and a GREAT chardonnay - in this case the 2005 Stephane Tissot Arbois chardonnay Les Graviers - and it becomes one of those stellar wine pairings you dream about.

It wasn’t the only great wine on the menu which was at a wine dinner at Two Lights in Hackney - there was also a marvellous Crémant de Jura called Indigène, a more youthful 2017 Bruyères chardonnay (served with scallops ‘casino’ with bacon, truffle and I think, almost certainly, butter) and a Vin Jaune La Vasée 2011 which was paired with aged Comté.

But the chicken, which was a poulet de Bresse served with chips and a mustardy hollandaise was the undoubted star. The chardonnay worked in much the same way as a great white burgundy (it's apparently grown on similar limestone soils to Corton Charlemagne) but with a slightly nuttier taste and the most brilliantly refreshing acidity. (We also tasted a couple of red wines with it - a 2016 Côtes du Jura Pinot Noir En Barberon and a 2017 Singulier Trousseau but I thought the chardonnay worked best.)

The best food to pair with chardonnay

If you’re interesting in learning more about Tissot, who cultivates his vines biodynamically, there’s a good Q and A on the Union Square website.

See also 8 great wine (and other) matches for roast chicken

I attended the dinner as a guest of Two Lights

When you can pair asparagus with red wine

The idea of partnering asparagus with wine is contentious enough but red wine? Surely that won’t work?

Well, it so happens it does as I managed to prove at an event called the Great British Asparagus Feast in Bristol last week when I picked the pairings for a menu that had been devised by three of the city’s top chefs.

The main course was a whole roast, brined chicken on a bed of wild garlic served with chargrilled asparagus cooked with sautéed girolles (wild mushrooms) and dukkah (a middle-eastern style topping of chopped hazelnuts and sesame seeds) from Josh Eggleton of The Pony & Trap.

I’d paired the 2014 Tyrrell’s ‘Old Winery’ Pinot Noir from south-east Australia with it in the hope that it would go with the chargrilled asparagus and mushrooms and it really worked - largely because it was quite a dark-fruited style of pinot rather than a light, raspberry-scented one. You can buy it from independent wine merchants including Dennhöfer Wines and Richard Granger Wines for between £10-12 which is excellent value for money for a pinot.

The other matches were a Gavi di Gavi with a dish of asparagus, hand-rolled cavatelli, slow-cooked egg and goats cheese from Adelina Yard which I picked to reflect the Italian influence of the dish and a lovely lush white Chateauneuf-du-Pape ‘Les Hauts de Barville’ 2014 from Maison Brotte with a dish of asparagus, with white and brown crab meat, saffron and lovage from Wallfish Bistro.

We finished with a cheese course rather than a dessert - Caerphilly with pickled asparagus with which I paired a medium-dry cider - Charmer from Somerset producer Orchard Pig. (Well, the dinner did take place in the West Country!).

Oh, and we kicked off with a sparkling wine called Castlebrook Brut which came from one of the asparagus producers, Wye Valley which you can actually buy in selected branches of Marks & Spencer (and from their website)

The wines were sourced from Stewart Wines who supply Yurt Lush who hosted the dinner.

Mount Pleasant Elizabeth Semillon 2007 and roast chicken with tarragon

I never understand why retailers tell me it’s so hard to sell Hunter Valley semillon. It’s such a unique style of white wine which tastes (lusciously) of fresh pineapple when it’s young and of baked or grilled pineapple as it matures.

Maybe it’s because it aquires a slightly oily texture as it ages - a bit like a riesling but it’s also seductively rich and despite its low ABV (11%) a full-bodied enough partner for roast chicken as I discovered at the weekend. We tried it with a bird I’d roasted with tarragon and served at room temperature (delicious at this time of year). It was also perfect with a chicken pie I was trying out.

This particular vintage seems to have picked up an impressive number of gongs - it has 10 gold medals on the label yet is an incredibly reasonable £14.95 at slurp.co.uk and Hawkshead Wines. The 2005 vintage is even better value at £53.94 (£8.99 a bottle) at Tesco.

For more semillon pairings see this longer post.