Sesame prawn toasts and Ortega

English wine might not be the first thing you’d think of pairing with prawn toasts - more likely something like a riesling but at the Caravel restaurant in London the other night it just hit the spot.

The toasts which were served with chilli jam were one of a selection of snacks and starters we shared as is generally the way these days. There was also smoked duck with a carrot pickle and rosti with sour cream and ‘caviar’ but it was the toasts that were the standout pairing.

The wine, by Westwell in Kent - the Ortega Classic - was young, fresh and floral so not unlike the aromatic whites you might pick from Alsace or elsewhere. You can buy the ’21 vintage we had for £19 from The Good Wine Shop and £19.50 from Highbury Vintners.

Caravel is a great choice if you’re looking for an special venue for a date night. It’s on a barge on Regent’s Canal and has very romantic (and flattering) low, soft lighting. Snacks and starters aside, the cooking is a bit hit and miss and the wine list could do with being a bit longer but the atmosphere is lovely. Hard to get into though so book well ahead.

Chocolate and orange cake and Chateau Climens

I’ve always considered Sauternes is too delicate a wine to pair with chocolate unless it’s accompanied by something like passionfruit with which it chimes in but it turns out if the wine is old enough - and good enough - it can handle even a chocolate cake.

The cake - chocolate marmalade slump cake - is an old favourite from food writer Lucas Hollweg’s Good Things to Eat and in fact I discovered I’d recommended it with Tokaji 8 years ago, back in 2014! But it was the wine - an astonishingly fresh half bottle of Chateau Climens 1989 that stole the show. With orangey notes of its own you might have thought it would be eclipsed by the marmalade and orange zest in the cake or overwhelmed by the dark chocolate chocolate but it was one of those rare combinations where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

The only problem is procuring a bottle that old at an affordable price. Even the 2010 is £60 a half bottle these days but if you can lay your hands on an equally old Sauternes go for it!

The best food pairings for Sauternes

Beef tongue and dry oloroso sherry

I’ve been sitting on this pairing (not literally) for a couple of weeks now but thought I’d bring it out for Sherry Week so you can try something like it yourself

It was the winning entry in the UK final of the Copa Jerez which is an international sherry pairing competition for chefs and sommeliers and was won by Gail Ge’er Li and Jaichen Lu of Dinings SW3 restaurant.

What was interesting about the dish was how homely it was - rich, warming and perfect for this time of year. Both the tongue and the radish had been braised in an umami-rich stock to which amontillado sherry had been added - the claypot rice had been cooked in the same stock. There were also some pickled girolles in the dish and some shredded ginger and shiso leaf which added a refreshing lift.

The intensely nutty, dry sherry the winning pair chose was the ‘La Cigarrera’ Palomino oloroso from Bodegas La Cigarrera, a small family-owned bodega in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. You can buy it from terrawines.co.uk for £16.50

Both the other finalists partnered their main courses with dry oloroso - Restaurant Story with a dish of roast pigeon and a roasted artichoke purée and the team from Elchies Brasserie on the Macallan estate with a Speyside Wellington where the beef was cured in oloroso then smoked over Macallan sherry cask shavings.

Dry oloroso is a much underrated style IMO (you can see some more pairings here) but one well worth exploring with food.

I was a judge at the Copa Jerez final which took place this year at Trivet in London

Cod pot au feu and Beaujolais

Beaujolais cuisine is typical old-school bistro food - so it was no surprise to find on my recent trip that it sailed through the charcuterie, andouillette and oeufs en meurette. But I had rarely had it with fish so I found this pairing with a cod pot-au-feu at Georges Blanc’s brasserie Le Rouge et Le Blanc at the Hôtel lea Maritonnes particularly interesting.

The cod, which fell apart in perfect pearly flakes, was cooked in a broth of leeks and carrots so it was basically a light dish that paired really well with the Domaine de la Pirolette Saint-Amour we were drinking, particularly the 2018 from the Le Carjot lieu-dit (vineyard). It would have gone well with a Fleurie or one of the lighter 2021s too. (2020 was a particular full, ripe vintage and might have overwhelmed the dish, especially from an appellation like Morgon)

Another really good - and unexpected - pairing was at a nice little wine bar called Au 91 in Villefranche sur Saône where I had a simple starter of hummus with a green salad garnished with pomegranate seeds. (Uncharacteristically restrained but I’d just had a charcuterie tasting). It was the pop of pomegranate that made the match with a Chateau Bellevue Fleurie sing.

For a full list of my Beaujolais pairings see here