Lettuce with smoked fish and vermouth sauce paired with vermouth

I hesitated to make this astounding drink pairing which I had at Mauro Colagreco’s new restaurant at Raffles in London recently my match of the week because I it would be really hard to replicate but I’m sure would fascinate the chefs, sommeliers and other food and drink professionals among you.

The menu is led by vegetables which reflects the style of his three-Michelin-starred restaurant Mirazur in the south of France. The lettuce was a red oak lettuce served with smoked fish and a just-warm creamy vermouth sauce and some some delicious crunchy shards of what looked like puffed rice. In other words a reimagined caesar salad

With it the sommelier had paired a vermouth called Vinmouth, an organic white vermouth from Perpignan, which worked brilliantly with the warm, rich dressing and the smokey fish. There don’t appear to be any UK stockists but you can buy it from Le Grand Epicerie in Paris.

In fact all the pairings on the drinks pairing menu were outstanding and could easily have made the match of the week slot.

There was a refreshing rhubarb ‘amuse’ that wasn’t on the menu which was paired with a medium-dry French cider called Maley

The first course of seabass sashimi and sea buckthorn was matched with a Tatomer grüner veltliner from California

Then the lettuce

Followed by a spectacular dish of Jerusalem artichoke, monkfish, wild mushrooms and hazelnut which was paired with a Filipa Pato Nossa Calcario Bical 2021 from Bairrada in Portugal (a clever low cost alternative to white burgundy)

The main course was a more conventional pairing of radicchio with grilled loin of venison and mustard sauce with Guigal Chateau d’Ampuis Cote Rotie 2018. Glorious

And finally a show-stopping dessert of citrus, crispy ravioli shell black lemon ice cream and yoghurt fontainebleu which was paired with a Masumi yuzushu yuzu liqueur - an extravagant burst of creamy citrus.

Of course, bearing in mind that this is a top Michelin-standard restaurant albeit it hasn’t been rated yet the price isn’t cheap - £165 for a 5 course tasting menu and £125 for the ‘Exploration Route’ pairing though that’s not out of order for a restaurant of this quality.

However there is a 3 course à la carte ‘discovery’ menu for £110 and a lunch menu for £60 from Tuesday to Saturday apart from Christmas and other holidays. Certainly worth taking advantage of at that price.

For more conventional caesar salad pairings see here 

For other monkfish wine matches click this link

For venison pairings visit this page

I ate at Mauro Colagreco, Raffles as a guest of the restaurant.

Radicchio, pickled pear and blue cheese salad and Le Bistro Montmija white

This crisp white wasn’t chosen as an exact match more like a wine I thought would run along with everyone’s starters when we went out to lunch at The Bull in Totnes last week

But I chose it as match of the week to illustrate that you don’t necessarily need to drink port or a sweet wine with blue cheese. The dish was a fresh-tasting salad of radicchio, pickled pears, walnuts and Beenleigh Blue (a local sheep cheese) in which the cheese was offset by the slight bitterness of the radicchio and sharpness of the pickled pears.

It needed an equally fresh fruity white and it got it in this inexpensive organic Languedoc wine which is a blend of grenache blanc, marsanne and sauvignon blanc.

You can buy it online from Vintage Roots for £8.99 and it would make a great party wine. (I like the red, which is a little soft, slightly less)

Artichoke and sheep cheese salad and Ciello bianco

Much is made of the difficulty of pairing wine with artichokes but this week’s match of the week proves it’s far from impossible with the right accompaniments

Chef Cosmo Sterck of Marmo in Bristol created this great salad of marinated artichokes, spelt, Berkswell sheep cheese and yoghurt with went perfectly with the fresh slightly hazy Ciello Bianco we’d ordered which I always think has something in common with a witbier (which you could obviously drink too).

It’s made from catarratto, comes from Sicily and is unfined and unfiltered but not scary at all for those of you who are natural wine sceptics. It’s also one of those hugely adaptable wines you can drink with all kinds of antipasti (it was also great with the salame and gnocco frito and gorgeous pillowy burrata they brought us*).

The key to the pairing, as I’ve pointed out before, is introducing a citrus note to the dish. The tangy sheep cheese and yoghurt obviously helped too

You can buy the wine from indies such as Buon Vino for £8.95 a bottle.

For more wine suggestions with artichokes see Pairing wine and artichokes

And if you're into artichokes make this delicioius artichoke and preserved lemon dip

*these dishes were complimentary. We paid for the rest of the meal.

Fennel and apple salad and Solaris

Finding a new salad that you love and will make many times over again is a win for any weekend but when you find the perfect wine pairing with it too it’s a real high point

The salad comes from fellow Guardian writer Meera Sodha’s Fresh India and is a fennel and apple chaat with caramelized almonds to give it its full name. It’s really light and springlike as the ingredients suggest and comes with crunchy little nuggets of caramelised nuts flavoured with crushed fennel seeds, ginger and honey. The dressing is a simple oil and lemon one seasoned with garam masala - which just gives it a faintly spicy kick. I swopped half of it with neighbours who gave me Meera’s winter pilau from East in return then we ate and chatted on Zoom.

The wine is Welsh, believe it or not - a Solaris from Montgomery vineyard in Powys and is deceptively rich given its modest 11.5% ABV. Solaris has become popular in the UK given that it ripens early. Montgomery's version is not cheap: Welsh - and English - wines rarely are but it really is delicious with some lovely fresh tropical fruit. You can buy it for £17.95 from Cheers of Swansea.

For other wine pairings for salad see Which Wine Pairs best with Salad