Beetroot and goat cheese macarons with a pet nat rosé

In a week of pretty amazing wine pairings (it’s not every day you get to taste five different vintages of Harlan Estate* over dinner) there was one really interesting match I wouldn’t have predicted - and that’s what this weekly slot is all about.

It was at a new(ish) restaurant called Osip in Bruton I’ll be writing about shortly and was with one of the initial snacks of the set price menu: beetroot and goat cheese macarons. Not having a particularly sweet tooth I’m not generally big fan of macarons but these were satisfyingly savoury with a really good beetroot flavour which chimed in perfectly with the Les Quatre Pétillant rosé brut nature we’d ordered as an aperitif.

Although it’s made from southern grapes - grenache, syrah and carignan - it’s produced in the Loire and is available from Uncharted Wines for £18.89. I particularly like the explanation on the label: “The Les Quatre philosophy is to make the best wines possible with a style they like to call ‘Paris Wine Bar’. We take that to mean totally drinkable, accessible and fun, all whilst being brilliantly made.”

That’s totally true.

See also The best wines to pair with beetroot

* It only didn't make Match of the Week because it was paired, fairly conventionally with a fillet steak!

Roast poulet de Bresse and aged Jura chardonnay

Roast chicken with chardonnay - what’s new about that I hear you say? Well, nothing, obviously but imagine some of the BEST chicken you’ve ever eaten and a GREAT chardonnay - in this case the 2005 Stephane Tissot Arbois chardonnay Les Graviers - and it becomes one of those stellar wine pairings you dream about.

It wasn’t the only great wine on the menu which was at a wine dinner at Two Lights in Hackney - there was also a marvellous Crémant de Jura called Indigène, a more youthful 2017 Bruyères chardonnay (served with scallops ‘casino’ with bacon, truffle and I think, almost certainly, butter) and a Vin Jaune La Vasée 2011 which was paired with aged Comté.

But the chicken, which was a poulet de Bresse served with chips and a mustardy hollandaise was the undoubted star. The chardonnay worked in much the same way as a great white burgundy (it's apparently grown on similar limestone soils to Corton Charlemagne) but with a slightly nuttier taste and the most brilliantly refreshing acidity. (We also tasted a couple of red wines with it - a 2016 Côtes du Jura Pinot Noir En Barberon and a 2017 Singulier Trousseau but I thought the chardonnay worked best.)

The best food to pair with chardonnay

If you’re interesting in learning more about Tissot, who cultivates his vines biodynamically, there’s a good Q and A on the Union Square website.

See also 8 great wine (and other) matches for roast chicken

I attended the dinner as a guest of Two Lights

Ox cheek (again) and Jumilla

I know I talked about ox cheek a couple of weeks ago (with nero d’avola) but here it is again in an even better combination with Jumilla at a lunch hosted by wine importers Morgenrot at Bar 44 in Bristol.

Jumilla, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a full-bodied red from the south-east of Spain based on the monastrell (mourvèdre) grape. This wine was the 2016 Goru 38 Barrels, a blend of monastrell and cabernet sauvignon. You can buy the 2015 version from Ake & Humphris in Harrogate.

What was clever about the match - part of a six course lunch in which all the pairings were really well thought out - was that it involved three elements that played to the rich almost porty sweetness of the wine: the braised ox-cheek which was cooked in red wine, calçots (which are basically young leeks and have a natural touch of sweetness) and an unctuously creamy cauliflower purée. Sipped alongside these rich, sweet and savoury ingredients (there was also a slice of aged sirloin) the Jumilla kicked beautifully into touch.

Given the other good matches which you’ll find on the site, it suggests that ox cheek (or tail for that matter) is the perfect match for the strong sweet reds that are so popular right now. And for other mourvèdres.

Try this delicious José Pizarro recipe for ox cheek

Cherries (and plums) with Central Otago Pinot Noir

One of the standard ways of devising a wine pairing is to pick out flavours in the wine and put them in the accompanying dish. Not too much or it can cancel out the flavour of the wine but done with skill, as it was by chef Des Smith at The Hunting Lodge, it’s pretty impressive.

The dish was an unctuous chicken parfait served with deep red cherries that had been macerated in pinot and a sliced - and I think also lightly pickled - plum. Two fruit notes that chimed in perfectly with their Central Otago pinot. (And also pretty good, it has to be said with their rather delicious Lagrein, a grape variety of which there is a tiny amount in New Zealand.)

The fact that the pairing was about the fruit not the parfait was underlined by the fact that I had a similar dish at Tantalus Estate on Waiheke the day before - this time made with duck liver and accompanied by pear and ginger which went really well with their pinot gris, which like most in New Zealand is made more in the Alsace style.

Often a successful pairing is more about the accents in the dish not the core ingredient. A smooth rich parfait flatters pretty well everything (except perhaps sauvignon blanc and other acidic whites) - it's the fruit you put with it that suggests the match.