Seafood tapas and Txakoli

Despite its almost unpronounceable name Txakoli (pronounced chackoly) is the new kid on the block for anyone who likes a crisp dry white wine.

It comes from Spain’s Basque country and is a clean-as-a-whistle, super-sharp white with a slight spritz that’s brilliant with any kind of seafood.

I had a glass of the 2013 Ameztoi Txakoli at the latest branch of Barrafina in Adelaide Street last week which was particularly good with the deep fried fish dishes such as ortiguillas (sea anemones) and with a delicious fresh-tasting salad of fennel, radishes and pears. They pour it with great ceremony from a bottle held high in the air - a bit like they serve fino sherry in Jerez.

You can buy it from Highbury Vintners for £13 - they also suggest anchovies as a good match which sounds a good call.

I made another Txakoli my match of the week back in September so you can see I'm slightly obsessed with it at the moment. If you're a fan of Muscadet, Picpoul and Vinho Verde you’ll love it.

Clams with rice and Verd Albera

What do you drink with tapas? My immediate go-to is sherry but having indulged that whim the other day in the form of a glass of tangy manzanilla amontillada from Lustau’s almacenista collection I unusually followed it up with a glass of white.

We were in one of my favourite tapas bars José in Bermondsey Street - named after its engaging proprietor José Pizarro. After working our way through the usual suspects (pan con tomate, jamon, croquetas* and patatas bravas) we had a couple of seafood dishes - garlicky prawns and clams with rice - that went brilliantly with a glass of 2012 Verd Albera, a blend of grenache blanc and muscat from Spain’s Costa Brava.

Despite the significant amount of muscat (30% I later discovered from importers Indigo Wine) it wasn’t overly perfumed but fresh, crisp and slightly smokey - a deliciously unusual fish-friendly white at a very good price.

*their croquetas are to die for. Some of the best I’ve tasted in or outside Spain.

Cider-battered onions with fino sherry

To kick off National Vegetarian Week and a week of veggie pairings (don’t groan, carnivores, we’ll be back on meat next week!) here’s a great pairing from Friday night’s underground supper club, Montpelier Basement in Bristol.

You might think cider would be the perfect match with cider-battered onions and of course it would, not least because you’d have an open bottle to hand, but chilled fino sherry - in this case Tio Pepe - is also the biz.

Fino sherry is normally associated with ingredients such as olives, nuts, Spanish ham and cheese but it’s also great with anything fried including croquetas, fritters and goujons.

I particularly liked this simple idea of serving onions in strips like churros. A really unusual and imaginative tapa.

Teroldego and Tapas

Sometimes you get in a rut with a particular food and wine combination - maybe on a ‘if it ain’t broke, why fix it? basis. Such is the case for me with tapas which I tend to recommend pairing with something Spanish - usually manzanilla sherry or - depending on the amount of seafood - a crisp Rueda, dry Spanish rosado or a young Rioja or similar Spanish red.

But the other night we were down at the Dartmouth Food Festival and found ourselves at the end of a tiring day sitting in the bar of a nice little boutiquey hotel called Browns drinking a light Italian red you don’t often come across called Teroldego Rotaliano

The hotel owner, James, had just started a policy of serving free tapas, Spanish style at the bar on Friday nights but because we were hungry and he couldn’t fit us into the restaurant brought out an amazing array of dishes you’d be lucky to get in London, let alone Dartmouth.

There was a great selection of Spanish charcuterie including ham carved off the bone, lomo and chorizo (sourced, James said, from the excellent Brindisa). There was superb morcilla (black pudding) on toast and morcilla fritters. There were spicy little quail Scotch eggs with a daub of chilli jam (OK, not particularly Spanish but very tasty), pan-fried prawns and a range of great cheeses including the delicious Monte Enebro. And the Teroldego went with them all.

I wouldn’t necessarily advocate looking out for it specifically to drink with tapas but because of its acidity and freshness it is a great all-rounder - the sort of bottle to order at the table when one of you is having fish and the others meat. And it's the sort of red that could handle creamy sauces.

The bottle we had - a 2006 Teroldego Rotaliano Riserva from Mezzacorona - is particularly good value. It costs £9.95 from slurp.co.uk, £10.49 from allaboutwine.co.uk which has the 2007 vintage and £13.61 from zelas.co.uk. And it’s a real find - as are the tapas in Browns.