Peas and pinot

Having been flying around the world for the best part of the past month I had a quiet week at home last week which (unusually for me) involved no outstanding drinks pairings.

So I thought I’d revert to a favourite that to enjoy at this time of year - fresh peas and pinot noir

I’m not sure why it works so well but if you serve peas with almost any dish it enhances the match with pinot. The sweetness picks up on the complementary sweetness of many pinot noirs - especially youthful fruity new world pinots such as those from New Zealand but I think there’s also an underlying umami thing going on - cooked peas in particular are umami-rich.

So I’m not sure whether it’s the duck or the peas in that classic combination that makes the match with pinot work so well but the two together? Heaven!

Photo © almaje @fotolia.com

Spiced whitebait with sriracha and Chinon rosé

As you’d expect many of the usual suspects featured in my pairings this weekend (chocolate, anyone*?) but the match I was most impressed by was nothing to do with Easter

It was an amuse or pre-dinner ‘snack’ as we must now call them of spicy deep-fried whitebait at Box-E, a local Bristol restaurant I impulsively popped into for a dish on Saturday in order to check out a rosé we'd been chatting about on Twitter. (As you do ...)

The wine was a delicious dark salmon-coloured Chinon rosé called Le Chic from Johann Spelty that tasted almost like roasted rhubarb but it easily took the whitebait which came with a wedge of charred lime and a dab of sriracha (hot chilli sauce) in its stride. Disproving the theory that oily fish and chilli are impossible to match with wine.

Box E got an enthusiastic review from the Observer’s Jay Rayner this week which given it only has 14 seats will make it even more difficult to into but it’s worth persisting. Elliot Lidstone’s imaginative food makes it one of my current favourites on the Bristol food scene.

*gratuitous excuse for a plug for my new ebook 101 Great Ways to enjoy Chocolate and Wine (and other delicious drinks) which is now available for download at the introductory price of £3 until April 30th, 2017. I hope you'll agree that's a bargain!

Oysters and Tasmanian fizz

I’m not a big fan of champagne with raw oysters. Most have a level of dosage (added sugar) that tastes even sweeter when you pair them with a briny mollusc but Tasmanian sparkling wine is different

First of all their oysters are amazing so I’ve been seizing every conceivable opportunity to eat them (every day of my visit so far!) And the sparkling wine is spectacular - with an incredible freshness due to the high level of acidity. When dosage levels are kept low it makes a perfect pairing with an unadorned oyster. No need for a squeeze of lemon - the wine does the job - and with so much more elegance.

The wine that kicked off this train of thought was the Moorilla Extra Brut methode traditionelle which you don’t seem to be able to find in the UK but the Josef Chromy which is currently on promotion at Marks & Spencer for £16.50 a bottle would do the trick

Oysters are however served in many different ways here in Tassie - often with Asian style dressings and here another wine comes into play - the local Tasmanian rieslings which have a lovely streak of lime and green apple acidity to them. That would be a treat too.

Here are some other good matches with oysters

Best matches with oysters

Salmon with shellfish sauce and aged semillon

Last week I was in Australia’s beautiful Hunter Valley enjoying their two great specialities semillon and shiraz.

The semillon in particular is quite unique - crisp as a sauvignon blanc or riesling when it’s young, rich as a chardonnay as it ages. At Keith Tulloch’s winery restaurant Muse Kitchen we had his 2009 Museum Release Semillon with a plate of seared salmon with a creamy shellfish sauce which it matched perfectly despite its richness as Hunter Valley semillon always retains its acidity. Although it was eight years old it still had plenty of life in it.

Older vintages of semillon like this are hard to track down in the UK which makes it worth buying it young and tucking it away. In Australia you can buy the 2009 vintage direct from Keith Tulloch for 60 Australian dollars which is roughly equivalent to £36 a bottle

For more semillon pairing ideas read this post

The best food matches for semillon and semillon-sauvignon blends