Ox cheek ragu and nero d’avola

Nero d’avola may not be a grape variety you’re familiar with but in a recent blind tasting of 25,000 consumers carried out by Majestic it proved by far the most popular choice

So maybe it’s no surprise that it worked with a hearty pasta dish like the ox cheek and porcini ragu I had at Bomboloni in Bristol at the weekend.

The wine in question was drier than the appassimento style that proved so popular with Majestic’s customers (when you see appassimento on a label it indicates a sweeter style) but it was a lovely warm, rich wine called Plumbago which sounds like a painful back problem but is in fact a Sicilian flower.

I was chatting so busily to my friend that I failed to notice the vintage we were drinking but you can buy the most recent 2017 vintage from Exel Wines for £13.24 a bottle or £14.50 from winedirect.co.uk (£13.66 if you buy a case)

Here are some other nero d'avolas from an article I wrote for the Guardian a couple of years ago, if you're interested in knowing more.

Salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn with a mature South African syrah blend

Showing off a mature bottle of red is usually a question of keeping it simple but it adds an extra dimension if you can serve the perfect cut.

I’ve written before about Pete Hannan’s salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn beef (in fact a couple of you have been lucky enough to win one of his fabulous meat hampers). It has an incredible savoury depth of flavour plus a slight salinity from the salt ageing that shows off a good red to perfection.

I had a 2012 vintage of La Motte’s Hanneli R*, a blend of syrah (from two different sites in Elim and Franschhoek), grenache and petit sirah which I’d been meaning to try for a while and it really was the perfect moment to enjoy it. Every element was beautifully balanced and integrated which was impressive given it had been aged in oak for 40 months* (So impressed was I by the pairing that I tried it again to equal effect with Samantha O'Keefe of Lismore's 2016 syrah on New Year's Eve. You may have read that her home and vineyards were devastated by fire just before Christmas. All the more reason to support her in any way you can by buying and drinking her wine)

Too often I think we drink new world wines, especially the more expensive ones, way too young. We really should tuck them away and hang on to them.

See also The best wine pairing for steak

* The current vintage - although it appears that it's only available in South Africa - is the 2013 but you could obviously drink a mature Rhône red to equal effect.

Vitello tonnato and Etna Bianco

It’s not often you find a wine that sails through every dish you put in front of it but I’d say on the basis of Friday night’s Italian feast at Wild Artichokes in Kingsbridge that the Tenuta Tasca Buonora Etna Bianco 2017 would see you through almost any Italian meal.

The ‘feast’ - and it is indeed a feast - that Jane Baxter puts on during the Dartmouth Food festival is one of my favourite meals of the year - full of utterly delicious dishes you never come across in the average Italian restaurant. In addition to the vitello tonnato (veal with a tuna sauce) which was served with a cabbage and fennel salad, it also went brilliantly with a whole lot of other antipasti including trout in carpionne (a sweet-sour pickled dish) two kinds of sformato (flan), squid, a mussel and prawn black cavatelli, an incredibly moreish pasta dish of casarecci with sardines and with the main course of rabbit and artichokes too.

The wine which was wonderfully clean and linear - and only 12% - is made from carricante - you can find it for £19.47 a bottle from tannic.co.uk and £19,99 from allaboutwine.co.uk. Not cheap but fair enough, Etna is a touigh terrain to cultivate. And it really is delicious.

For other wine matches with vitello tonnato see The best wine pairings with vitello tonnato

Milk fed lamb and aged Vega Sicilia

One of the questions I get asked most often is what to drink with a treasured bottle and this week’s match of the week provides the answer it it’s a red.

It won’t be to everyone’s taste but it’s the baby or milk fed lamb much beloved of inhabitants of the Ribera del Duero region in the north of Spain.

I feel slightly embarrassed to admit this but I had it twice in one day last week - with venerable vintages of Vega Sicilia ‘Unico’ - at lunchtime with the 1996, then in the evening with the 1981 and the 1991 and have to admit it was sublime.

Why does it work so well? Well, the flavour of the meat, as you might imagine is delicate and sweet and it’s served on the rare side on its own with just the cooking juices. No heavy charring, no sauce, no gravy. No competing ingredients on the plate - though in the first instance it was served with the classic side salad of lettuce tomato and onion - the raw onion is possibly a bit brutal.

You may well feel uncomfortable about eating lamb at that age (21 days in the case of the evening meal) but you could take the idea and serve a similar wine with rosé veal or older lamb cooked the same sort of way. For some reason aged Ribera - and rioja for that matter - does go particularly well with lamb.

And if you're vegetarian and have read this far? I'm thinking a whole roast celeriac would be a good option.

Needless to say I was a guest of Vega Sicilia.