Scallops with Sauternes butter and oaked white Bordeaux

One of the treats I’ve lined up during lockdown is to have a weekly takeaway from a local restaurant, both to give me a break from cooking and hopefully help keep them in business and my first was a meal from one of my favourite Bristol restaurants littlefrench.

It included one of chef-owner Freddy Bird’s signature dishes of scallops with sauternes butter which of course posed the question what the accompanying wine should be.

Sauternes, I thought, would be too much of a good thing along with my feeling that it’s better at the end than the beginning of a meal but I did have a couple of dry white Bordeaux to hand. The best match was the 2016 G de Guiraud which had developed a rich tropical fruit character which echoed the richness of the sauce (which is actually as much about the butter as the wine plus some added tarragon I put in at Freddy’s suggestion)

You can buy it for £17.50 from Palmers Wine Store in Dorset or the more recent 2019 vintage from Davy’s for £17.95 which also has the 2017 vintage in magnum. Not that there’s much point in magnums at the moment!

If you live in Bristol you can order the littlefrench at home menu from their website.

For other wine matches with scallops see also Top wine pairing with scallops

Scallops, nduja and Frappato

Last week I went to a wine dinner hosted by the Sicilian wine producer Donnafugata at Luca in London. They’re best known for their fabulous passito di Pantelleria dessert wine, Ben Ryé, but in fact it was the cleverly partnered dry wines that stole the show.

I’m picking - with some difficulty - as my match of the week a dish of scallops with the 2017 Bell’Assai Frappato, a charming light graceful red from the Vittoria region. What clinched the match - although it could probably have stood up on its own - was the nduja (spicy Calabrian sausage) purée and nutty Jerusalem artichokes that went with it.

I also loved the bold pairing of a white wine - the Vigna di Gabri - a blend of the local ansonica and catarratto with chardonnay, sauvignon blanc and viognier - with a pasta course of rigatoni with braised lamb and olives (lamb and white wine can work surprisingly well) and the pitch perfect match of the dark savoury 2014 Mille e Una Notte (nero d’avola, petit verdot and syrah) with a dish of ox cheek, caponata and grilled radicchio. The bitterness of the radicchio with the sweetness of the ox cheek was an inspired combination.

Oddly the Ben Ryé (we drank the 2015 vintage) went best with a bergamot sorbet rather than the Sicilian lemon tart for which it didn’t have quite enough acidity but all in all a really impressive hit rate. Good work, Luca!

Incidentally I drank the Frappato again yesterday with a dish of chicken chermoula to which it stood up equally well so it can obviously take a fair bit of spice. It’s just gone on sale in Oddbins at £28 although an online company called Tannico seems to have it for £19.70. Incidentally they recommend you drink it cool at 14°-16°C.

For other scallop matches see Top Wine Pairings with Scallops

I attended the dinner as a guest of Donnafugata and Liberty Wines.

Peruvian-style scallops and Rioja rosado

I thought it was pretty brave of rioja producer Ramon Bilbao to present their wines at a cutting edge Peruvian restaurant last week. Still, everyone knows rioja goes with Spanish food so why not? You never make new wine pairing discoveries if you don’t push the envelope.

The restaurant was Lima, a modern Peruvian restaurant that is owned by the chef Virgilio Martinez who is ranked 4th in the World 50 Best List. It also has a Michelin star.

The food is not particularly spicy but full of vibrant colours and flavours - this scallop dish of raw scallops with tigers milk and passionfruit sounds like one of those nightmare combinations that shouldn’t work but was absolutely delicious.

It was paired not with a white but their top level Lalomba rosé which as it happens I’d put in my top 30 gastronomic rosés in Decanter a couple of months ago. It’s very clean, fresh and elegant without any overtly fruity flavours and suited the dish perfectly.

Other wines that showed well were the Ramon Bilbao Sauvignon Blanc from Rueda which went with a starter of quinoa with sweet potato and fresh cheese and a really fabulous Andean potato stew with seaweed. The fresh-tasting Ramon Bilbao Vinedos de Altura rioja 2014 was also perfect with a dish of suckling pig.

It can’t have been easy to make the pairings work so successfully so all credit to the chef Robert Ortiz for tailoring his food so well to the wines.

I ate at Lima as a guest of Ramon Bilbao.

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Venerable wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd went for a combination of the second and third strategies - choosing for Burgundy specialist Jasper Morris’s leaving lunch a light summery starter of raw scallops with cucumber, radish and apple salad that wasn’t the obvious match for some simply thrilling white burgundies. But obviously nobody cared - it was an incredible treat to get to taste such wines.

The wine that ‘did’ hit the spot was an oak-aged 2014 Dog Point Section 94 sauvignon blanc* from Marlborough in New Zealand, very much in its prime, which absolutely sang with the scallops but would you turn your nose up at a 2004 Meursault or Montrachet? I suggest, dear reader, you would not.

The other standout combination rather than standout wines (they were all spectacular) were the two reds that were served with the cheese course of Montgomery cheddar, Tunworth and Cote Hill Blue (a blue brie from Lincolnshire) - a 2003 Vega Sicilia Unico and a 1997 Ridge Monte Bello. Great choice of cheeses - none were too strong or stinky and both reds were mellow and mature enough for their tannins not to create problems with the cheese - which can be the case with younger wines

The main course of lamb with grilled Provençal vegetables and an olive crumb worked predictably well with two grand cru Charmes Chambertins - a 2010 from Olivier Bernstein and a 2000 from Denis Bachelet and a 1999 Volnay Santenots-du-Milieu from Domaines des Comtes Lafon (in magnum)

And I should confess that we drank 2001 Chateau d’Yquem with the dessert - a lemon tart with orange carpaccio and lime (and maybe coconut) tuile

I doubt if any of us - including the Berry’s team - got a great deal of work done that afternoon ....

* which you can currently buy on special offer at £18.95 from Hennings and £19 from The Wine Society.

I ate at Berry Bros as their guest.