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. 

Hake with white asparagus, smoked caviar and gamay

You might instinctively reach for a glass of white wine with hake but red wine can work equally well. And not only when it has a red wine sauce.

This dish at The Blue Pelican in Deal which, despite the name, is an excellent Japanese restaurant, came with white asparagus, smoked Petrossian caviar and a sauce which I’m guessing included miso and mirin.

It was richly umami anyway which made it a an obvious pairing with the orange Beaujolais they had listed on the short, smart wine by the glass list.

But it was the red - a Domaine St Cyr ‘La Galoche’ Gamay from the same region that was the greater surprise, complementing the hake without overpowering the delicate flavour of the asparagus or the caviar.

It was, also a great match with a dish of pork belly with cockles and sansho pepper but then gamay almost always works with pork.

Although we kicked off with a white - an A Desconhecida Arinto blanco - you could perfectly well drink a red like this throughout a Japanese meal.

You can buy the La Galoche from Uncharted Wine for £20.29 or £21.95 from Cork & Cask in Edinburgh

For other Beaujolais pairings see Top Food Matches for Beaujolais (and other gamay) 

Condrieu and Cornish Brill salan

The idea still persists that wine doesn’t go with Indian food but when the flavours are subtle and the dishes presented individually you can pair some of the best wines in the world with it.

This was a dish at an amazing Indian restaurant in London called Bibi whose chef Chet Sharma has a fine dining background so it was really only the sauce they needed to take account of in their accompanying wine flight.

It was what’s called a salan which, according to Wikipedia, is “a mix of green chilli peppers, peanuts, sesame seeds, dry coconut, cumin seeds, ginger and garlic paste, turmeric powder, bay leaf, and thick tamarind juice”. I don’t know how chef Sharma made his but the peanuts and the coconut were the dominant notes. It wasn’t hot but was quite punchy.

With it we drank a glass of 2023 Condrieu Les Vallins from Christophe Blanc. A young wine but already richly expressive with a full, fruity (mainly apricot) flavour. (Condrieu is made from Viognier so if you were trying this type of dish at home and couldn’t run to Condrieu you could try other viogniers.)

You can buy it for £57 from Hedonism

For other viognier pairings see My favourite pairings for Viognier 

And for less usual ideas of what to pair with Indian food see here.

I ate at Bibi as a guest of the restaurant.

Tempura Jersey Royals and Jersey Royal vodka

You probably wouldn’t think of pairing wine - or any other drink - with Jersey Royal potatoes but then you probably wouldn’t be having them as the central feature of a five course tasting menu as I was at Pêtchi in St Helier in Jersey last week.

Of course there were other ingredients that influenced the pairings which were mainly wine-based but the two I was particularly struck by were the first two courses that were devised by chef Joe Baker: a Jersey Royal tempura and a fermented potato bread (below).

We’d been served a Seaweed Martini consisting of Fluke Jersey Royal Vodka, sake and kombu to kick off which I still had in my glass. It went surprisingly well with both dishes, which despite the other ingredients on the plate - the tempura was accompanied by a salted egg yolk and chill and the bread with dulse (another kind of seaweed) butter - were really all about the potato.

Later I tried another vodka, the luxuriously creamy Jersey Royal Mash which is made from larger potatoes that would otherwise go to waste which I sipped as a shot and reckon would have worked really well too. They produce one for M & S which sells for £30 in store and online from Ocado though you can also buy it from Amazon.

Maybe it would even go with chips!

For other vodka pairings see the best food to pair with vodka.