Soumaintrain and Chablis

There were many great pairings to pick from in Chablis last week but the one I’m going for is a cheese I was relatively unfamiliar with: Soumaintrain

It’s an unpasteurised soft cow’s milk cheese from burgundy that is washed with brine and Marc de Bourgogne (a grappa-like spirit) but generally has a creamier texture and less pungent flavour than Epoisses - or at least it did in the Chablis region where the exterior of the cheese is ivory white rather than yellow or orange.

I think younger cheeses work best with a younger Chablis or premier cru Chablis of, say, 2-3 years old while more mature ones benefit from a vieilles vignes (old vines), older vintages or a grand cru Chablis. I’m not sure I’d open a grand cru especially for the cheese course but if you were drinking one with the main course it would work perfectly with the cheese. Much better than most red burgundy, in my opinion.

More to follow on Chablis pairings in due course . . .

Oysters and La Amistad 2013 - a young fresh red from Alicante

It’s generally held that red wine doesn’t pair with oysters unless they’re served, as in Bordeaux, with little crepinettes (pork patties) or spicy sausages but I found a wine last week that suited them perfectly.

It was at the oyster fest held by Newman Street Tavern to celebrate the new season's oysters which were served, beautifully fresh, with a choice of condiments including herb and shallot vinegar.

There was also a choice of drinks including cider (too sweet, in my opinion), Guinness, white wine (didn’t choose it so can’t remember which) and, best of all, a chilled Spanish Rojal from Alicante called La Amistad. It was pale, fresh, very dry and tasted a bit like tart wild cherries which made it improbably good with the oysters - especially served without either of the vinegars. It’s available in the UK from The Real Wine Fair online shop for £12.06. L'atypique Wines has the 2012 vintage

I also drank another lovely natural red - a Plousard - with fish (seabass) when Alice Waters of Chez Panisse came over to cook at Sally Clarke’s last week. You can read about the match and the meal on my blog.

Duck liver, bacon and onions with orange wine

There’s still a lot of suspicion about orange wine with many in the wine industry taking the view that it’s faulty rather than, what it actually is, a different style of wine.

Basically it’s a white wine which has been left on and picked up colour from the grape skins in a similar way to a red. That gives it more tannin and body than the average white.

Becky the co-owner of our favourite local restaurants Birch is a great fan and produced this wine off the list for us to try: a Bianco Testalonga from Antonio Perrino in Liguria which is made from Vermentino grapes. It was very dry but refreshing and had that lovely quince character that makes orange wine so interesting with food.

I thought it paired well with several of the dishes we ate including a ‘snack’ of rye crispbread and smoked pollock’s roe and a caramelised onion tart but was particularly good with a starter of duck liver, home-cured bacon and onions cooked in cider (no cheap jibes about orange wine tasting like cider anyway please . . . )

You need to think of orange wine as another option on the wine list like rosé - and arguably better suited to this time of year than many crisp fresh whites depending on the food you're eating. (It's not so good with seafood, IMO.)

For other suggestions as to what to eat with orange wine see Donald Edwards post here.

Lamb rogan josh with huitlacoche and Torres Milmanda chardonnay 2008

This may well be the most off-the-wall pairing I post this year: chardonnay with a lamb curry? Extraordinary - and this is why

I’ve been at the Wine and Culinary Forum, a biennual exploration of food and wine where I was suggesting food pairings for a star-studded tasting of wines from the Primum Familiae Vini (PFV) an association of 11 of the world’s top family winemakers

There were many fascinating presentations but the most spectacular was a session from the Canadian author François Chartier who takes a molecular approach to food and wine pairing.

He focused on the aromatic compound sotolon which is found in foods including fenugreek, maple syrup, brown sugar and soy sauce and drinks such as dark beers, coffee, aged dark rum, the Hungarian sweet wine Tokaji and aged white wine. He got three chefs to cook dishes that included some of these components but tasted as if they included others - like a dish based on pork fat which tasted as if it included maple syrup but didn’t.

But the dish that makes my match of the week slot was a rogan josh from chef Vineet Bhatia that included the sotolon-rich ingredient huitlacoche a naturally occurring fungus a bit like a truffle which grows on ears of corn. It was served with an unusually (for Indian cuisine) wet rice flavoured with coconut and fenugreek which spectacularly accentuated the sotolon hit. Paired with a mature, rich 2008 Milmanda chardonnay it was simply sensational, freshening the wine and leaving it beautifully in balance with the rich lamb dish.

Chartier has done more than anyone else except perhaps Josep Roca to put food and wine pairing on a scientific footing but although the pairing was undoubtedly dazzling I feel there still remains the problem of expectation. Your senses are telling you that the pairing of a dark curry with a rich chardonnay won’t work which militates against the success of the match in an ordinary dining context. That doesn’t, of course, mean you shouldn’t keep pushing the boundaries as Chartier undoubtedly will. If you want to know more about his theories read his book Tastebuds and Molecules.

Apologies for the photo which was of a tasting sample. Vineet plated up a full-size version with a lamb shank that looked far more spectacular.