Seabream carpaccio with blood orange and Hugel Gentil

If you’re pairing a wine with a raw starter like carpaccio you might think your choice needs to be dictated by the fish but as with other ingredients it depends what else is on the plate.

As part of a tasting menu at Caper and Cure in Bristol it came with oyster, mayonnaise, smoked caviar, mooli and blood orange but it was the orange in particular that kicked it into touch with the 2021 Hugel Gentil we had ordered.

‘Gentil’ is an unusual wine from Alsace - a officially recognised category of wine  which has to be at least 50% Riesling, Muscat, Pinot Gris and/or Gewurztraminer (this version from Hugel also contains a significant amount of Sylvaner).

It’s not as heavily scented as gewürztraminer or as sweet as muscat but definitely aromatic yet it worked really well with the dish. It also matches, as you might expect, with many Chinese, Indian and Thai dishes.

You can buy the 2022 vintage from Tanners for £15.20 or from Taurus for £15.49.

I was invited to Caper and Cure for the launch of their new menu but contributed towards the cost of the meal and the wine.

Sake and truffle fries

As I discovered when I visited Akashi Tai in Japan last autumn* sake is coming out of its shell, no longer a niche product to drink in Japanese restaurants but a versatile beverage to pair with food.

Last week I had it with several umami-rich dishes at a fancy restaurant called Dalloway Terrace in Bloomsbury - a preview of their forthcoming sake menu which included a mushroom soup and a dish of chicken breast with mushroom and truffle sauce.

I went full truffle by also ordering their Twineham Grange and truffle fries which actually proved an even better match with the full-flavoured Heavensake Junmai 12 sake I was drinking and a combination you could easily replicate at home (less expensively than at Dalloway Terrace where the chips are £8 though that isn’t out of the way for London these days.) Twineham Grange is a vegetarian parmesan-style cheese which is made in Sussex.

You can buy the sake, which is made in collaboration with Regis Camus, the cellarmaster at Piper Heidsieck champagne for £29.99 from simplywinesdirect  or from Laithwaites for £33

* See also 8 foods you might be surprised to find pair brilliantly with sake

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Heavensake

Quenelle de brochet, sauce Nantua and Mondeuse blanche

Quenelle de brochet is one of the classic dishes of French haute cuisine so it was amazing to find it the other day on the set lunch menu at Joséphine, an excellent new bistro on the Fulham Road

It has been opened by Michelin-starred chef Claude Bosi and his wife Lucy in homage to the ‘bouchons’ (homely restaurants) of his home city of Lyons

Technique apart it’s a relatively straightforward dish. - a hot fish (pike) mousse with a shellfish - in this case langoustine - sauce but the mousse is so airy and the sauce so rich that it’s hard to find a wine that will flatter both.

Chablis would have probably done the trick but tends to be overpriced on restaurant wine lists so I settled for a glass of Domaine les Bruyères Mondeuse blanche, Cuvée L’Avarice. (Mondeuse blanche is a rare grape variety from Savoie though this was classified as a Vin de France.) It was a delicately creamy white which was surprisingly intense for its 11% ABV and was perfect with the dish. It’s imported into the UK by Dynamic Vines who are selling it for £26 a bottle.

I suspect a blanc de blancs champagne would also work.

Ox cheek lasagne and zinfandel

It’s always a treat going round to my friends Stephen and Judy for supper.

Stephen is one of my all-time favourite chefs and his former restaurant Culinaria in Redland was one of the reasons we moved to Bristol when we found the flat we were thinking of renting was just down the road!

Judy lets me know what he’s planning to cook so I can bring along an appropriate wine. In this case it was an ox cheek lasagne so I scanned my wine rack and came up with this single estate bottling of Ridge’s 2019 Pagani Ranch Zinfandel I’d splashed out on from The Wine Society a few months back. (I love Ridge!)

It comes from vines planted before Prohibition and is a field blend of (mainly) zinfandel, petite sirah and alicante bouschet

I’d prematurely opened a bottle not long after I'd bought it which I’d found too sweetly overripe but six months on it was spot on: smooth, rich and sumptuous, just perfect with the deep flavour of the oxtail and cheese.

Great dish. Great match! (Rubbish photo - sorry!)

See also:

 The best food pairings for lasagne 

The best food pairings for Zinfandel