The best wine and beer pairings for savoury pies

We Brits don’t need much encouragement to eat pies—they’re a staple of comfort food culture. But when it comes to enjoying a drink with your pie, the question arises: which is the better match—wine or beer? The answer, as always, depends on the type of pie you’re talking about and the flavours it brings to the table.

Steak pies with gravy
Almost always better with a strong ale or porter in my opinion.

Steak pies with red wine sauce
Should work with any full-bodied red. I normally tend to favour Languedoc or Rhône-style reds but a new world red like a malbec or an Australian shiraz would work well too

Chicken pies with a creamy filling
I’d go for an unoaked or subtly oaked Chardonnay, old vine Chenin Blanc or any other smooth dry white. Cider and perry also work well with chicken pies.

Pies with a tomatoey filling
Whatever the other ingredients I generally find cooked tomato works better with wine than with beer - I’d suggest an Italian Sangiovese or a Tempranillo-based red like Rioja, especially if there’s chorizo in it.

Cheese and spinach pies
I generally prefer crisp whites such as Sauvignon Blanc or even a more neutral white such as a Picpoul de Pinet with a light vegetarian pie like this but a light red like a Beaujolais would be delicious too.

Fish pies
Pair with the same sort of wines as creamy chicken pies.

Cold pies
With a classic pork pie I’d always go for an English bitter. A cold game pie however is a great match for a good red burgundy or Pinot Noir.

Photo © Richard M Lee at Shutterstock

6 of the best drink pairings for avocado toast

Judging by my Instagram feed practically everyone is eating avocado toast at least once a day but what do you drink with it?

If you’re not on Instagram - or one of the 10 million people who has apparently searched for avocado toast on Google* - you may even wonder what it is.

Smashed up avocado on toast - or bread. That’s it.

Well, more or less. There are all sorts of fancy variations but purists like to keep it simple

Fans are as likely to have it for breakfast as they are for lunch or supper so my six pairings include 3 non-alcoholic drinks:

Green tea
Not just a colour thing, the slight herbiness of green tea is great with avocado. Better than coffee IMHO. By the way don’t make it with boiling water - that’s why it tastes bitter.

Homemade lemonade or - if you haven’t got time to make it - lemon and lime Juicy Water. Citrus and avocado is a no-brainer

A Virgin Mary (in other words a Bloody Mary without booze)
Tomatoes and avo are also great. This looks a good recipe

Witbier
A well-chilled Belgian-style wheat beer served with a slice of lemon. Much more interesting than lager.

Sauvignon Blanc
Definitely the wine that comes to mind. Great with guac - equally good with avocado toast.

A classic margarita
If you want to pay tribute to avocado’s Mexican origins there can be no better cocktail. Do make it with fresh lime though rather than a Margarita mix

*twice as many as fried chicken, would you believe?

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Image by FoodieFactor from Pixabay

Good wine pairings for Saint-Nectaire

Having spent a few days in the Auvergne recently and eaten more than my fair share of Saint Nectaire cheese with a variety of wines, mostly natural, here’s what I think works best.

Saint Nectaire is a semi-soft cows’ cheese with a buttery consistency and a crumbly grey-ish brown rind. It can have quite a strong flavour - though not as strong as ‘stinky’ French cheeses such as Epoisses. It’s a well-known enough cheese to have its own website though only in French.

The locals would drink it with a red, most likely gamay or a gamay blend though a crisp white or even a sweet wine could work equally well, depending on whether the cheese is mass-produced or made on the farm by an artisan producer. Here are my top picks:

* Gamay from the Loire, Auvergne or Beaujolais - ‘natural’ wines, made with indigenous yeasts, are a good match with stronger flavoured ‘fermier’ cheeses

* A red burgundy or other traditionally made pinot noir

* A rustic red like Marcillac or a fruity young syrah from the Rhône

* Chardonnay from the Auvergne (leaner, less creamy than burgundy). I reckon a mature vieilles vignes (old vine) Chablis would also work

* Dry or medium-dry (demi-sec) Chenin Blanc from the Loire e.g. Vouvray or Montlouis or richer South African Chenin Blancs. A sweeter Chenin could be good too, particularly if it was a few years old - i.e. honeyed rather than simply sweet

* Savignin from Switzerland or the Jura

* or try a sparkling Breton or Normandy cider.

Other good suggestions from wine writer Victor de la Serna on Twitter: “Asturias/Galicia reds, young bobal, manzanilla” Not sure about the manzanilla but a dry amontillado would be good, as would a tawny port or a dry madeira.

Wine and Indonesian food: which wine pairs best with Rijsttafel?

I posted this last year after trying Rijsttafel - the Indonesian speciality that’s widely available in Amsterdam. Translated literally as ‘rice table’, it’s an elaborate array of curries, salads and pickles which present a tough challenge for any wine.

The one we had was at Blauw, a restaurant strongly recommended by foodie colleagues and in the immensely useful Where Chefs Eat and couldn’t have been a better introduction to the genre.

The curries are hot but also sweet which tends to strip the flavour out of drier wines including the Gruner Veltliner we ordered, a normal go-to with south-east Asian food, although it matched a couple of lighter introductory dishes. Several also had a rich peanut sauce. The wines I thought would make the best pairings for Rijsttafel itself were off-dry whites though I came up with a couple of other options you might enjoy:

Viognier

Actually we tried a sip of this and it did work

Gewurztraminer - it wouldn’t match all the dishes but would be a good all-rounder

Off-dry Pinot Gris from Alsace or New Zealand

Barossa semillon would work well with the peanut sauces

Torrontes (a suggestion from Blauw’s own list)

Off-dry Clare or Eden Valley riesling like this Grosset riesling which was my match of the week a while back with a Chinese New Year feast

New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc with a dash of tropical fruit

Off-dry strong rosé such as those you get from Portugal and South America

Chilled New Zealand Pinot Noir - the favourite of the chef Agus Hermawan. Or Chilean Pinot Noir, for that matter. You need a touch of sweetness.

Ripe but not over-alcoholic Shiraz and similar GSM (Grenache/Syrah/Mourvèdre) blends