Oscietra caviar and Galvin at Windows’ White Snapper

Last week was (highly unusually) a big week for caviar - and caviar substitutes which I ate on two successive nights paired with everything from vodka to beer. Decadent or what?

But it was this original and delicious cocktail - an inventive twist on the classic Bloody Mary - by the bar team at Galvin at Windows ‘caviar in the sky’ event that really stood out for me.

Apparently it was made with Bulldog gin, various (unspecified) spices and clarified tomato juice which gave it a delicate but not overpowering tomato flavour - and, as you can see, was very prettily garnished with a dried slice of lime.

We tried a whole range of caviars with it (from King’s Fine Food who sell online if you’re minded to repeat the experiment) and it pretty well sailed through them all except the denser, saltier, pressed caviar. The oscietra was my favourite though.

Fred Sirieix at Galvin at Windows is planning a caviar dinner on the strength of the tasting. Some of the prepared caviar dishes we tried from head chef Joo Won which included scallop tartare with lime zest and juice, olive oil, lychee, orange, borage flower, coriander cress and oscietra and crispy quail egg, charred baby leeks, cep cream and ceps with Siberian caviar were amazing. I’ll be writing more about the other pairings in due course.

Wine and cheese: Rosemary and ewes’ milk cheese and (very) old white rioja

Last week I hosted a tasting for Wines of Rioja at Cambridge Wine Merchants. You never know quite how these things are going to work out on the day but happily most of the matches were spot on.

The standout pairing for me though was the extraordinary Lopez de Heredia Blanco 1998 - no that’s not a misprint! A 15 year old white made in an oxidised, almost sherry-like style having been aged for six years in cask. That sounds as if it might be unbearably woody but not at all - there was a sherried note to be sure but also a beguilingly honeyed character and a wonderful freshness at the end. An extraordinary wine.

I’d paired it for comparison with a younger oaked white rioja (the 2010 Amaren Rioja Blanco) and chosen a selection of tapas including almonds, ham from Teruel DO, and a delicious rosemary coated ewes’ milk cheese. The cheese and the Tondonia was just brilliant, one of those fabulous matches where each brings out another dimension in the other.

It underlines my conviction that white wine is just as good, if not a better match for cheese than red, albeit a less intuitive one.

You can currently buy the Tondonia Blanco from Cambridge Wine Merchants for £29.95, Fortnum & Mason for £29.50 and Corks of Cotham in Bristol for £28.99

Smørrebrød and a Sonoma County Sylvaner

I’ll be focussing on some of the more conventional wine pairings I came across during my recent visit to Napa and Sonoma later this week but here’s a really off-the-wall match I encountered in San Francisco

It was at brunch in the popular Bar Tartine in the Mission district - a restaurant that has a bit of a mittel European/Scandinavian vibe and a winelist to match but also some intriguing oddities in the way of Californian wines.

I went for a glass of the Scribe Sylvaner Ode to Emil no 11, from Andrew Mariani in Sonoma which is named after Emil Dresel who first brought sylvaner cuttings to America back in 1858. It was deliciously crisp and fruity (think starfruit) similar to some of the silvaners I was drinking in the Rheinhessen a few weeks ago.

I chose it because I thought it might stand up to the pickles we’d ordered but found it even better with a selection of open sandwiches on pumpernickel which included quark topped with lox, smoked pork with mushrooms and fried onions (particularly good with this) and kale with yoghurt and seeds (kale being very on-trend in San Francisco right now).

It even survived the smoked potatoes and potato pancake with corned beef and horseradish we ordered in the interests of - er hem - research. (Yes, we did pig out)

A grüner veltliner - and believe it or not they do have some in California - would have worked too, I suspect.

The sylvaner appears to be sold out from Scribe but still available from Domaine LA in the US. But substitute a dry German or Alsace sylvaner which should match equally well.

Pithivier of pigeon with Hermitage jus and 2011 Château Plaisance, Fronton

Matching a rich dish like pigeon with wine is quite challenging, especially if you serve it with an intense jus like this one so should you go for something equally rich or a refreshing contrast?

The sommelier at Galvin Bistrot de Luxe went for the latter option at a dinner to celebrate the restaurant’s eighth anniversary last week, choosing a light fresh dry Fronton from south-west France instead of a similar Rhone like a Crozes Hermitage or a Hermitage itself and it was absolutely perfect.

It may have been in his mind that the dish followed on two rich main courses with equally rich wines. The first course was a velouté of Potimarron squash with ceps and chestnuts (matched with a 2011 Chateau Lamothe-Bouscaut Pessac-Léognan) and the second a lasagne of crab with beurre Nantais which was paired with a 2009 vintage of the Galvin’s own label white burgundy, which is made for them by Vincent Girardin. They were great matches too (you get three for the price of one in match of the week this week!)

The art of food and wine matching is all about balance - not only in a single dish but right throughout the meal