Pistachio pesto and solaris

One of the best food pairing experiences I’ve come across in a winery is the one laid on by Hebron vineyard in West Wales.

It obviously helps that the co-owner of the vineyard, Jemma Vickers, is also a caterer and that she and her partner, Paul have a garden which produces most of the veg they serve but she lays on regular wine and ‘tapas’ tastings with which you can taste their organic low intervention wines

All the pairings were interesting but the one that particularly stood out for me was a dish of finely sliced raw courgettes with a pistachio pesto (top left) - made without cheese, with pistachios rather than pinenuts and with less basil than in the Ligurian version which made it gently creamy rather than pungent.

It worked brilliantly well with their light, fresh, citrussy almost appley 2021 Solaris which is only 9 1/2%. It’s made in an amphora and is unfined and unfiltered. (And they serve extra ingredients on the side like mayonnaise and chilli so you can see how they react with the wine too.)

They also make a 7% red from rondo - an ABV so low they’re not allowed to call it wine but it still showed really well with some slow cooked lamb and salsa verde.

If you’re in that part of Wales it’s a really charming place to visit and the vineyard where the vines are trained up willow saplings (a strategy to combat mildew) is just gorgeous.

You can buy both wines from their website for £28 and book tours and tastings via this link.

I was given a complimentary tasting and tour by Hebron vineyard.

Oysters and Provence rosé

I wouldn’t have thought of pairing rosé with oysters to be honest when there are so many good alternatives in the way of white wines but when I was poured a glass of Chateau Galoupet’s Côtes de Provence rosé at Hawksmoor Wood Wharf the other night I found it was a surprisingly good match.

They serve oysters three ways - unadorned, roasted with bone marrow and with a Scotch bonnet mignonette.

The chilli-spiked mignonette was particularly good with the Provençal style of rosé which in many ways works similarly to a white with seafood.

I’m not sure I would abandon my usual choices which you can see if you click on the link below but if I was opening just the one bottle with a meal of which oysters were part it would work just fine - as it would with a less expensive but equally dry rosé

The best wine (and other) pairings with oysters

You can buy Chateau Galoupet’s 2021 rosé on offer £36 at Berry Bros & Rudd at the time of writing and for about £45-50 at other indies

I ate at Hawksmoor as a guest (of my son!)

Cañitas with coffee and licore tostada

There were so many great seafood pairings with albarino in Rias Baixas last week you might wonder why I would pick anything else as my match of the week but its always been a feature of this slot that the pairing should be a bit of a surprise, as much to me as to you. And this combination at Casa Boveda totally was.

It was a dessert of cañitas - the Spanish equivalent of Sicily’s cannoli - crisp pastry tubes flled with pastry cream flavoured, I would guess with vanilla. It was served wtih a digestif called Cumbre Iberica Licore Tostada which is a smooth sweetened brandy-based liqueur which added a rich, caramelly counterpint to the smooth, creamy pastries. My black americano coffee which was served at the same time, made the perfect trio.

(Thanks to Miguel Crunia of Fion Wines for the background information)

And if you want to know what to pair with albarino here’s a list of suggestions (which I will be updating shortly)

Kohlrabi with fig leaf oil and English sparkling wine

A really fascinating pairing from a wine dinner at Skye Gyngell’s restaurant, Spring in collaboration with Domaine Hugo (and their vegetable supplier Fern Verrow)

Domaine Hugo is a Wiltshire based producer - the French name refers back to the time its owner Hugo Stewart was making wine in the Languedoc as Les Clos Perdus. He and his winemaker Daniel Ham make mainly sparkling wine from classic champagne grape varieties but in a natural, low-intervention style.

The wine that was paired with this dish was a rich, almost floral, sparkling brut nature without any added dosage but ripe enough to have just a touch of honey - the element that chimed in perfectly with the fig leaf oil drizzling the plate.

it was a surprise as the dish - which was sensational - was all about the salt-baked kohlrabi and the herbs - but fig leaves have an exotic scent with which the wine chimed in perfectly. Figs and honey - it makes sense when you think about it but it was a very clever, intuitive pairing from Skye.

You can buy the wine, which is unfortunately not cheap, as it’s made in tiny quantities, from the Good Wine Shop for £54 but it is extraordinary. There are links to other stockists on the Domaine Hugo website

More wine dinners are planned at Spring so it would be worth signing up to their mailing list to be kept informed.

I attended the dinner as a guest of the restaurant