When food and wine matching doesn't matter

Although I make my living writing about how food can enhance wine - and vice versa - I would never want to be dogmatic about it and freely admit that there are occasions when it matters less than others.

Exactly such an occasion occurred earlier this week at a wine dinner at my son’s restaurant Hawksmoor which featured Charles Smith, of K Vintners (right) who I met a couple of months ago in Walla Walla in Washington State. Beyond saying he’s a rock’n’roll winemaker, a description I suspect he’s heard rather too many times, he’s hard to categorise but his ‘wild man’ appearance and demeanour bely the fact that he’s a serious winemaker* and winelover who produces some really top class wines.

So the times to be relaxed about trying to achieve a perfect match are:

When the wines are great.
When the wine is REALLY good you’ll enjoy it anyway pretty much whatever you drink it with. Use common sense here, obviously. I wouldn’t have fancied one of Charles’s high octane Syrahs” with a piece of seabass or a delicate risotto primavera but there would be no point in agonising whether they’d go better with beef, pork or lamb. What makes this easier is that the wines are superbly well-balanced. As Charles aptly put it “I don’t like wines that are pulled like a freight train across your palate”

* the 2008 Northridge Syrah Wahluke Slope and the 2008 Morrison Lane Syrah from the Walla Walla valley

When the food is simple
The more complicated food gets in the way of sauces and accompaniments the more potential there is for a flavour mismatch. Hawksmoor’s USP is impeccably sourced British ingredients served simply so we were served grilled Dorset Blue Lobster with butter (fantastic with the K Vintners 2009 Viognier) and great platters full of steaks, marrow bones and sides (spot on with both the Syrahs and Charles’s immodestly named Creator - a 60/40 Cabernet/Syrah blend. Infanticide really to drink them at this age but there you go. They were still great).

You could have served the lobster with a good Chardonnay with equal pleasure and the steaks with almost any good full-bodied red (that’s the joy of steak) but if I can chip in with one of my geekier observations the voluptuousness of Charles’s wines certainly helped drive through condiments like ketchup which can knock the stuffing out of less substantial wines. You wouldn't want to do that to a Hermitage.

When the food is shared, family style
This of course has always been the case with many ethnic cuisines and is becoming more and more common in modern British and New American restaurants. The bigger the range of dishes and flavours the harder it is to find a precise match.

There’s something about a big table that’s also quite loud and boisterous and doesn’t make for thoughtful contemplation of the finer nuances of food and wine pairing. What one’s looking for are generous, easy-going bottles that will take you through a meal or a section of a meal.

There are moods to be taken account of with food and wine matching just as there are with food or wine on its own. Sometimes you want to strive for a knock-out effect and sometimes you just want to sit back and enjoy the experience . . .

* Charles Smith was Food & Wine’s Winemaker of the Year in 2009. To see for yourself what I mean by rock'n'roll watch this episode of Wine Library TV.

I attended the dinner as a guest of K Vintners and Bibendum Wines.

What to drink with Turkish food

Turkish food is not traditionally accompanied by wine. And although the Turks do have a wine industry not much of it makes its way over here. But here are some thoughts on possible pairings for Mark Hix's Turkish inspired recipes in the Independent this weekend"

Mackerel in oil with vinegar and shallots
This sort of escabeche dish is tricky to match with wine. Raki - the Turkish equivalent of ouzo - would make a good accompaniment, particularly if there were a whole selection of mezze on the table, but not everyone likes its aniseedy taste. A sharp lemony white like - dare I say - the Greek Assyrtiko from Santorini or a Spanish Rueda would do the job.

Yoghurt with honey, pistachios and pomegranate
Hix suggests this could be a dessert as well as a breakfast dish in which case you could serve a simple fresh sweet wine with it like a New World late harvest Sauvignon or Semillon but what immediately comes to mind is a freshly squeezed orange juice

Pancakes with spinach, spring onions and soft cheese
These are a little like spanakopitta and as such would go with almost any crisp dry white, an inexpensive sparkling wine or a light lager. Personally I'd go for a good Pinot Grigio from the Alto Adige like the one I had yesterday at a Great Western Wine tasting, the biodynamically grown Loacker Isargus 2007, expensive for Pinot Grigio at £12.50 but well worth it.

Duck kebab with spiced bulgar
This would work with almost any fruity red of character: try a Turkish or Georgian wine if you can get hold of one or an inexpensive young Syrah-based southern French red. And of course there's always Pinot Noir - a no-brainer with duck.

Wine and pepper

Like salt, pepper has a pronounced effect on wine, often making reds taste softer and lusher than they otherwise would. Unlike salt though, you also find peppery flavours in wines such as Northern Rhône Syrah and Austrian Grüner Veltliner.

The problem about finding the same flavour in a food and a wine is that the more dominant flavour in the food tends to knock out the same characteristic in the wine. (Other examples are orange Muscat which won’t stand up to an orange-flavoured dessert or an evolved Pinot Noir whose mushroomy notes become barely perceptible if partnered with cooked mushrooms.)

So what do you drink when pepper is the point of the dish? Here are my suggestions, paired with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s recipes in the Guardian today.

Salt and Pepper Squid
There’s not just black pepper in this dish but Szechuan pepper and chilli as well which makes it hot. Winewise you could go two ways - a zesty unoaked Sauvignon Blanc which would provide a lemony lift to the combination or a crisp, limey Australian Riesling which I think would be my preferred match. (Note the pairing will change if you add a squeeze of lemon. Try the wine first and proceed with caution! ) I’d also like a cold Kölsch or lager with this.

Goats' cheese marinated in seasoned olive oil
Sauvignon Blanc is always the first port of call with goats’ cheese but the flavours in the olive oil - garlic, lemon zest, black and pink peppercorns and chilli again - mean only a super-charged Sauvignon will do. Pick one that has powerful lemon zest notes of its own such as a south Australian Sauvignon Blanc or a Chilean one. (Yes, I know I said don't replicate the flavours of the food in the wine but I just don't think a herbaceous Sauvignon will work here.)

Steak in Green Peppercorn Sauce
Green peppercorns used to be a common basis for steak sauces like this. It also contains cream and brandy, an immensely wine-friendly partnership. I think I’d be looking for a Syrah or Shiraz but one without obvious peppery notes of its own, maybe in combination with its other habitual southern French bedfellows, Grenache and Mourvèdre. So a Languedoc red such as Faugères would be perfect. Or a Western Australian Shiraz. (Note: all this pepper will accentuate the sensation of ‘hotness’ in any accompanying wine so watch the alcohol!)

What to eat with old Côte Rôtie

An irresistible dinner invitation came my way a few weeks ago, to attend a game dinner and tasting of René Rostaing’s Côte Rôties at Emanuel College, Cambridge. Cambridge colleges are famous for their wine cellars but these wines came from the personal wine cellar of its ‘wine steward’ Dr Jonathan Aldred, the fortunate fellow (in both senses of the word) who buys all the wine for the college.

Rostaing is regarded as a modernist in Côte Rôtie but most of these wines dated from the 1990’s before he was using such cutting edge equipment as rotary fermenters. The tasting was based on the outstanding ‘91’s with younger or, in the case of the La Landonnes, an older vintage for comparison. The outstanding wines in my view were his 1991 Côte Rôtie and the 1990 La Landonne which marginally shaded it over the ‘91. The Côte Blondes were a slight disappointment, the first ‘91 being slightly dirty. (The second was much better but not in the class of the La Landonnes)

Dinner was served in the ante-room to the gallery, a splendid crimson-painted room overlooking the courtayard of this 400+ year old college (founded in 1584) It was not a meal for the faint-hearted. It started conventionally enough with a large slab of rich game pat (very good with the ‘91 Côte Rôtie) then went on to an innocuous sounding venison ‘duo’, an exotically dark dish of venison liver and what tasted like braised haunch but which the chef later revealed had been heart. I didn’t have a chance to quiz the chef but I think the sauce was almost certainly made with blood lièvre à la royale style. The Blondes survived intact.

The main course was woodcook, served the traditional way with its entrails, another intensely gamey note that really set off the La Landonnes to perfection. They also matched well with the cheese - sensibly limited by Dr Aldred to three plain hard cheeses, a Beaufort, a Comté and a Gruyère.

The dessert wine was Austrian rather than French: a really lovely Beerenauslese, the 2003 Samling 88 from Helmut Lang, which Aldred had picked to go with a dessert of crêpes suzette (fortunately neither too orangey nor too syrupy otherwise it might well have overwhelmed the wine).

Dinner certainly highlighted even mature Côte Rôtie’s power in being able to stand up to such strong-flavoured game dishes - and also its longevity. The colour on all the wines had remained amazingly intense.

Dinner was jointly organised by Cambridge Wine Merchants who have three shops in the city and organise regular events and tastings.

Image by BlueBreezeWiki - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0