Sauvignon-semillon and seared salmon carpaccio

Some weeks are tougher than others when it comes to picking my match of the week. Last week which included an excellent lunch with Carolyn Martin of Creation Wines at Sexy Fish was one.

I dithered over whether to highlight the two duck and pinot pairings - one with a duck and watermelon salad, the other a delicious, glazed honey and shichimi duck breast, kimchi and pickled daikon - but you all know about duck and pinot, right?

So I’ve gone for the salmon carpaccio and Creation’s 2015 Walker Bay sauvignon-semillon. It’s a blend that often gets overlooked in favour of the brighter, zestier flavours of straight sauvignon but I love its smooth lush texture and almost tropical fruit. Apparently it’s aged in 320 litre cigar-shaped barrels which allows more of the wine to be in contact with the lees.

The elements in the dish that made it work so well were the yuzu (Japanese citrus) and the sesame oil in the dressing which keyed in to different elements in the wine. (The viognier was pretty good too.)

Helpfully Carolyn gives detailed pairing suggestions and recipes with all their wines. I also like the sound of this simple pickled fish recipe.

For other pairings with salmon see 10 ways to serve salmon and the wines to pair with them. You can see my review of an earlier visit to Sexy Fish on the decanter.com website.

I attended the lunch as a guest of Creation Wines.

Asparagus with poached egg, watercress sabayon and Chateau Doisy-Daene Sec

Asparagus and fine white Bordeaux sounds a bit of a risky wine match but the way the dish was prepared made it a standout pairing.

Mind you, if anyone could get it right it should be wine auction house Bonhams in London who featured it on the menu of their first weekly supper club last week.

The dish included a Burford Brown poached egg and watercress sabayon which both added texture and richness to the dish and there was also some confit lemon which helped build a bridge to the still relatively young, but already lush wine.

Two of the other pairings at the dinner were spot on too: cod tempura and oyster mayonnaise with a crisp 2013 Vermentino di Bolgheri and gariguette strawberries with a delicate sweet red Aleatico Sovana Superiore, also from Tuscany. I was less keen on the powerful Alvaro Palacios Priorat that had been paired with the delicate main course lamb dish but that probably says as much about my personal taste as the match itself.

As I said Bonhams has started this weekly dinner which is a well priced £45 + another £35 for wine pairings which is good value for the central London location (just off Bond Street), the standard of food and the quality of the wines. The restaurant functions as a wine bar during the day so you can dip into their list at other times. Opening hours on their website.

For more asparagus matches see Top Wine Pairings with Asparagus

I ate at Bonhams as a guest of the restaurant.

Prawn raviole and white Bordeaux

Having spent 3 days in Bordeaux last week I’m spoilt for choice about my match of the week but I’m going for one of the less obvious pairings (so not Pauillac and lamb!).

This was at a rather glorious outdoor lunch with Chateau Faugères in Saint-Emilion - the best of the trip from a food point of view cooked by a freelance chef called (I think from a hastily scrawled note) Matthieu Detchart.

The dish was rather grandiosely called raviole de crevettes aux légumes fondants, bouillon de carcasse à a citronelle et curcuma and was basically a giant Asian-style raviole filled with prawns and shredded, stir-fried vegetables (mainly carrots) with a light broth flavoured with lemongrass and turmeric.

It wasn’t really spicy at all just delicately aromatic and a brilliant match with the Chåteau Faugères Bordeaux Blanc 2011, a three-way blend of Semillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Sauvignon Gris which was also very light, elegant and citrussy (more grapefruit than lemon). Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be available in the UK but you could subsitute a similar young white Bordeaux without too much obvious oak influence.

I do think white Bordeaux is hugely underrated.

 

Stir-fried lobster, egg white and scallop mousse with Chateau Fombrauge Bordeaux Blanc 2009

A standout combination from the Hong Kong Tourist Board lunch at Bordeaux’ annual wine festival Fête le Vin last week. It was also the standout dish, a finely worked assembly of delicate flavours and textures from Chef Man Sing Lee of the Mandarin Oriental.

It would have been easy to overwhelm it with a more powerfully oaked white Bordeaux like the Château Pérenne 2010 which accompanied a cold starter of crab with mushrooms, seaweed and a sesame and citrus dressing but the lusher, lighter Fombrauge added a lovely fresh, citrussy lift.

The meal also contained one of the most bizarre wine matches - and desserts - I’ve ever come across - a couple of coconut coated marshmallow rabbits which were paired with a full-bodied (14%) 2006 Magrez Fombrauge 2006 Saint Emilion Grand Cru.

It wasn’t as much of a mismatch as I thought it was going to be - the dessicated coconut managed to marginally offset the tannins - but it was definitely a case of ‘you could but why would you?’ Maybe I’m missing a significant cultural reference here but it’s not even year of the rabbit.