Salt cod, oxtail and Ferñao Pires

It’s not often you have a wine flight with a tasting menu in which every pairing is so perfectly constructed that it’s almost impossible to say which was the best. Every match at Restaurant Nathan Outlaw deserved to be a match of the week but if pushed I’m going to go for this one because it was so unexpected.

It was course 4 and a beautifully balanced dish of salt cod (freshly salted, not dried) oxtail, crisply fried parsnip and chilli. Given the oxtail and the fact I’d drunk white wine up to that point I was expecting a red. But in fact sommelier Damon Little boldly stuck to white all the way through the meal and he was right - the richly textured Ferñao Pires from Quinta da Boa Esperança near Lisbon stood up to all the ingredients without overwhelming them in just the same way as the other elements in the dish respected the fish.

Ferñao Pires is a much underrated Portuguese grape variety - well, isn’t all Portuguese wine underrated? - with an exotic tropical fruit character but not in anyway coarse, confected or cloying. (You can buy it through Sommelier’s Choice in the UK)

While I’m at it let me tell you about the other course where I thought Damon might have brought in a red but which again worked with a white - in this case the Terrace 2015 from Keermont in Stellenbosch South Africa - a ‘Cape White’ blend of chardonnay, chenin blanc, sauvignon blanc and viognier - with a dish of turbot, and swede with red wine and sage. Despite the red wine sauce the white was perfect due, I suspect, to a generous amount of butter. (That wine comes from Swig)

If you’re not a white wine drinker don’t worry - there are plenty of reds on the list and I’m sure Damon could construct you a whole wine flight around them!

I ate at Nathan Outlaw as a guest of the restaurant.

Oaked white rioja and rabbit terrine

This time of year is full of pre-Christmas get-togethers which means a higher than usual number of meals out and an above average number of interesting wine pairings.

I’ve had a terrific match with a carbonara this week (a dry Italian white called passerina) and a stunning one for a venison casserole (an old Felton Road pinot noir) but the ones I was most intrigued by were with a mature white rioja at a Spanish wine dinner at Asador 44 in Cardiff hosted by wine writer Tim Atkin.

It was a really sumptuous barrel-fermented Finca Allende*, from the 2014 vintage (the most recent vintage) which had the richness and depth of a mature white burgundy - not as intense as the Vina Tondonia blanco but more than most oaked white riojas. (It was also aged in oak for 14 months)

It was officially paired with a rabbit and game terrine with girolles and quince to which it added a quince note of its own but was also great with the next course of confit and roast leg of milk-fed lamb with some pretty punchy sides including charcoal king oyster mushrooms, broccoli with morcilla and romesco and escalivada (a roasted vegetable salad). That was also perfect with its intended match of a rich, spicy Montsant Altaroses 2015 from Joan d’Anguera proving, if you’ll pardon the expression, that there are more ways than one to skin a cat when it comes to wine pairing.

Note neither of those dishes would have worked with the brighter, unoaked style of white rioja which can taste more like a sauvignon blanc - but in the oaked style behaves more like and can be substituted for a red.

For other white rioja pairings see The Best Food Pairings for White Rioja.

I attended the dinner as a guest of Asador 44

Ceviche and sauvignon blanc

It’s rare that you keep on coming across a wine pairing that impresses you but my 10 days in Chile over the past couple of weeks have finally convinced me that sauvignon blanc is the perfect match for ceviche which seems to have become Chile’s national dish.

You might wonder why I hadn’t hit on it before. Well, previously I’ve found that the citrus that is generally used in the marinade tended to cancel out the flavours of the wine but in Chile I think they make it with slightly different type of fruit more like a cross between lemon and lime and also don’t use quite so much of it. Also the fish is fantastically fresh which makes seafood the top note rather than the base. (It doesn’t seem to matter much whether the fish is salmon, tuna or rockfish but their ceviche often includes raw onion another element that kicks sauvignon into touch)

Chilean sauvignon is also very fresh and sometimes saline without the powerful grassy or gooseberry character of sauvignons from countries such as New Zealand. Definitely better without oak and the younger the wine the better (so 2018 at the time of writing works just fine along with fresh 2017s)

Spicy Sichuan noodles and sour plum tea

Although I think the difficulty of matching troublesome ingredients with wine is overrated that’s not true in the case of chilli which is an integral part of many Szechuan dishes. The tofu noodle hotpot I had at my local Chilli Daddy in Bristol at the weekend was definitely a case in point.

In fact the heat level was only 2 out of a possible 5 but even then it built quite markedly as the meal went on, one reason, I imagine, why they served a small bowl of (remarkably delicious) pickled beansprouts on the side.

The drink I’d ordered - a sour plum tea or Suan Mei Tang - also proved to be an effective antidote. It was a curious drink I hadn’t come across before - more pruney than plummy and intriguingly smoky.

According to an informative blog post I came across on The Woks of Life it’s made from several ingredients including dried sour plums and hawthorn berries and is commonly served with hotpot and other spicy foods. Wikipedia says the plums are dried before smoking, hence the smoky note.

Although I wasn’t sure I liked the taste at first it was brilliantly refreshing with the noodles and the more I drank it the more I enjoyed it. Definitely a drink to look out for or even make yourself if you like a lot of chilli.