Match of the week
White truffles and Boca
A full-bodied red mightn’t be the first wine you’d think of reaching for with white truffles but it works remarkably well as I discovered at a truffle dinner at Bocca di Lupo last week.
Boca is one of Piedmont’s lesser known appellation but still features its best known grape Nebbiolo, there known as Spanna, which can be blended with two other local grapes Bonarda di Novarese and Vespolina
The Tenute Guardasole Boca we were drinking was a relatively young 2017 - in order to be certified the wines have to be aged for 36 months , two years of which must be in oak - but was still bright and vibrant with no signs of age. Chef Jacob Kenedy had paired it with a dish of carne cruda, raw veal liberally anointed with white truffles but despite being 14% it didn’t overpower the dish at all.
You can buy it from Nemo Wine Cellars for £35 a bottle or £38.06 from Shelved Wine.
According to this article on wine-searcher.com it has a formidable ageing capacity. - I’d love to try an older vintage. You can find out more about the winery here.
I ate at Bocca di Lupo as a guest of the restaurant.
Louis Roederer Brut with a truffle cheese toastie
This match last week at 45 Jermyn St had EVERYTHING going for it starting with a decadent toasted cheese sandwich lavishly scattered with grated white truffle. What could be better? Well, actually a glass of very decent champagne (Louis Roederer Brut premier) with it - one of those matches made in heaven where the whole is better than the sum of the parts.
The entire experience which I suggest is the ultimate Christmas shopping treat isn’t cheap of course - £26.50 for the sandwich, another £12.50 for the fizz plus service which is likely to take you over the £50 mark for what is basically a snack. But frankly I’d rather pay that to sit in 45’s immensely glamorous dining room for a couple of hours than have a dull Christmas lunch elsewhere.
You could pull off a more affordable version at home by anointing the cheese in your toastie with a drizzle of truffle oil before you grill it and serving it with a glass of cut price fizz. (Sainsbury’s Blanc de Noirs is currently selling for £16 with a further 25% off if you buy 6 bottles in total - not all of which have to be champagne)
(45 Jermyn St is part of Fortnum & Mason btw so you have the added pleasure of looking at their fabulously glittery windows.)
Disclosure. As it happened I was treated but I went fully intending to pay.
Fonduta with white truffles and Barbera d’Alba
There’s only one pairing I could focus on this week given that I was in Piemonte and that is white truffles. What was the best match? Incredibly hard to say!
There were so many amazing ones - tajarin, the fine, intensely eggy pasta, carne cruda (the Piedmontese version of steak tartare) and a ‘timballo’ of autumn vegetables and truffles among them - but the one I think I’ve got to go for is the fonduta, a wonderful rich eggy fondue lavishly scattered with truffle shavings we had at Trattoria della Posta at Monforte d’Alba which I reviewed here.
I remember I picked out almost exactly the same dish six years ago when I last visited Piedmont though then we had it with one of the local white wines, a Roero Arneis - maybe because the dish also included cardoons.
It is, however, more usual for the Piedmontese to serve a young red wine with a white truffle dish, most commonly a Barbera or a Dolcetto rather than the Barolo I suggested back then. (Barolo would work equally well though they tend to save it for the main course). This time we drank a 2009 Barbera d’Alba Codamonte from Giuseppe Mascarello.
You could, of course, drink white wine with truffle dishes especially with carne cruda - with which we had a rich Gaja Chardonnay. And champagne though that’s obviously not traditional in the region.
RSS
Most popular
.jpg)
9 great wine pairings for duck (updated)
My latest book
How to Drink without DrinkingNews and views
.jpg)
Fine Wine and Fast Food
About Fiona
About Matching Food & Wine
Work with me
