Cold roast beef and a light Loire red

If you see the words roast beef you might automatically think of a full-bodied red - a Bordeaux or cabernet sauvignon, for instance - but there are times, as last week, when a light red will work just as well.

We were in a modern bistro in Paris called Collier de la Reine which serves small plates, as almost all restaurants do these days, one of which was a dish they described as ‘roast beef, potatoes, horseradish’.

It seemed a bit bizarre to order such a very English dish in the French capital but I was intrigued and in fact it was served in a very Parisian way - rare, bordering on raw and tiède as the French put it. Meaning at ambient temperature. Not quite cold but not exactly warm either.

With it I ordered a glass of A Contre Courant a natural wine from the Loire made from Pinot Meunier, Gamay, Cabernet Franc and Cot - interestingly a 2020 vintage although it still tasted remarkably fresh and was perfect with the rare meat.

Unfortunately that vintage only seems to be available in Japan although you can buy the 2018 vintage for £28 from Dynamic Vines whose website carries a good description of the background to the wine.

Other similar light Loire reds should work too.

See also Which Wine - or Beer - to Pair with Roast Beef 

The Best Food Pairings for Cabernet Franc

Lobster loaded fries and champagne

You may have noticed there was a slight hiatus last month when match of the week went missing. (May is peak wine tasting season and always crazy busy)

So I forgot to flag up this rather brilliant pairing with a splendidly indulgent dish I had at Burger and Lobster - their lobster loaded fries which consists of a couple of lobsters, a mountain of fries, melted cheese and - oooofff - a lemon and garlic butter sauce. 

Craftily they put it on the radar of ‘influencers’ before they actually put it on the menu so that we (I say ‘we’ but don’t really regard myself as an influencer) all got madly excited about it but it is on the menu now.

At £75 it’s not cheap but as you can see it’s definitely designed more as a main than a side and a sharing one at that. Even with two of us we couldn’t finish it!

What do you drink with it? Well normally I go for a rich chardonnay with lobster but with the fries it struck me that a glass of champagne would be a better bet - and so it proved.

In fact if you’re going for an extra I’d go for a glass of champagne rather than caviar which gets rather lost amidst all the fries and gooey cheese. (Their house champagne is Taittinger.)

Maybe it’s a bit over the top in these straitened times but it would make a great dish for a date night.

For other pairings with lobster see Wine with Lobster: six of the best pairings

I ate at Burger & Lobster as a guest of the restaurant.

Smoked trout and char with horseradish and Gemischter Satz

Last week I was in Berlin though the city seems to be more in love with Austrian than German wines these days.

This combination was one I tried at a winemakers evening at the Austrian wine bar Freundschaft which showcased wines from Weininger and Hajszan Neumann.

The fish was lightly smoked (I’d guess) and served as an open sandwich topped with dill, pickled radishes and horseradish - a particularly popular condiment in Berlin. (A delicious combination it wouldn’t be too hard to replicate)

It went well with the three or four wines we tried with it but the standout combination was a 2023 Weininger Ried Ulm Nussberg Wiener Gemischter Satz,

Normally Gemischter Satz, a Viennese field blend made from several different grape varieties, is a light wine you’d drink in a heurige (the local bars that ring Vienna) but this was a serious example from a single vineyard that could easily have passed for a white burgundy.

The vineyard is cultivated biodynamically and planted with Pinot Blanc, Neuburger, Welschriesling, Grüner Veltliner, Sylvaner, Zierfandler, Rotgipfler,Traminer and Riesling - which were picked by hand and vinified together.

You can buy the 2022 vintage in the UK for £30 from London End Wines.

See also this previous match of the week of sauerkraut and orange wine and this post on the best pairings with grüner veltliner.

Milk chocolate délice with miso caramel ice cream and a 1987 Georgian dessert wine

I was torn between highlighting one of the many good matches with orange wine at a wine dinner at the Japanese restaurant Niju last week and this show stopping pairing of a 1987 dessert wine with a dessert of chocolate “delice’ (basically a moulded mousse) with miso caramel ice cream.

Although the dinner underlined how well Georgian wine, particularly orange wine, goes with Japanese food, especially dishes that are rich in umami you won’t be surprised that chocolate won.

The wine of course was special - a 1987 dessert wine made from Rikatsiteli called Saamo that was appropriately described as a Collectible Dessert Wine. (Not half!)

At 17% it was more similar to a sweet fortified wine so full of rich fruitcake flavours along with a madeira-like fresh acidity that was hugely impressive for a 38 year old wine.

It scored 98 points and won a Gold Medal in this year’s London Wine Competition along with the accolades of Best Wine by Quality and Best Indigenous Grape Wine of the Year

As far as I can make out it’s unavailable in the UK but if you come across it in a restaurant be sure to order it. Preferably with chocolate and miso caramel - or just plain salted caramel ice cream.