What food to pair with a 15% ABV wine

Last night we opened a bottle of 2005 Nugan Estate McLaren Parish Vineyard Shiraz - a typically big lush Aussie red at a hefty 15% ABV.

Unfortunately it totally overwhelmed a dish of grilled lamb with sautéed vegetables - it was so concentrated it tasted like an undiluted cordial. At 3 years old I would have thought its tannins would have mellowed but it could have done with at least another 3 more.

I admit I prefer classic European wines to full on new world reds like this but 15% is a lot of alcohol by anyone’s standards. It’s certainly too much to drink on its own so what should you eat with it?

A stew with a rich winey sauce is one possibility but the wine is almost a sauce in itself. And it’s too ‘hot’ in the alcoholic sense to pair with spicy food.

In the rather cheekily named Michelin restaurant the Nugan family has opened next to the winery there are some big flavours on the menu which suggest the way to go. I’d be ordering something like the Chargrilled scotch fillet of black Angus beef, green onion and potato puree and roasted eschalots with truffle dressed watercress or Roasted rump of lamb, “lasagne” of eggplant, tomato and smoked mozzarella with Persian fetta (sic) pepperoncini (whatever the latter is but it sounds appropriately full-flavoured. A bit of cheese and some Mediterranean veg would certainly help.)

In general though I’d say that what you need is a touch of sweetness with this type of wine. A well-caramelised chargrilled steak, classic American-style barbecued or char siu pork, and sweet roast veggies such butternut squash and sweet potatoes, for example. It would also go with intensely savoury dishes such as garlicky portabello mushrooms or a rich venison stew.

You could also treat it like port and partner it with a full-flavoured cheddar or a blue cheese with a plum or damson compote.

PS Parker apparently awarded it 90 but has, I know, a taste for French bistro food so I’d be fascinated to know what he’d drink with it!

The best wine matches for luxury foods

It's party time and with any luck you'll be indulging in more than your fair share of luxury foods. But what to drink with them? The easy answer for most is champagne and that often works because it's as much a mood match as a food one. But if you're not content with the obvious so I've also come up with a few intriguing and stimulating alternatives:

Caviar
If you have lavish quantitites of caviar and are eating it pure and unadulterated threre's only one perfect match in my book and that is champagne. No other drink, even vodka, preserves the delicate texture of the eggs quite as well.

Which champagne is up to you. My own preference for a crisp, clean, unoxidised style such as Dom Perignon, or more inexpensively, Laurent Perrier or Taittinger or a bone dry non-dosage champagne such as Drappier Nature. If you're combining it with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon a blanc de blancs would be good.

Because of its cost though, caviar is often combined with other ingredients such as oysters, smoked salmon or - most commonly - blinis, sour cream, chopped egg and raw onion which militate against a top champagne and also bring other wines into play. A crisp Sauvignon Blanc, for example, with some lemon peel character such as you'd find in the Casablanca Valley in Chile or the Adelaide Hills region of South Australia would work well as would the intriguing new Spanish white Godello.

There's also caviar and 'caviar' - caviare lookalikes like Onuga which are fine for parties and perfectly good with less expensive sparkling wines. At wine merchant House of Glunz in Chicago recently I was was offered some great canapés made from white fish caviar flavoured with chillies and Absolut Peppar ( (available in the US from www.collinscaviar.com) which were paired very successfully with a Blanquette de Limoux

Just bear in mind - whichever wine you choose - that the saltiness of caviar (and oysters below) will make white and sparkling wines with a significant level of residual sugar taste uncomfortably sweet.

Foie Gras
With foie gras becoming increasingly controversial (see my own reasons for no longer eating it here) it's turning into an indulgence to share with consenting adults only - most probably Frenchmen (or women) or ardent Francophiles. The classic match, of course is Sauternes but there are many other sweet wines which work equally well such as Jurançon, vendange tardive Gewurztraminer or a Tokaji.

Not everyone wants to start a meal with a sweet wine though and it's not always necessary to do so. I can remember enjoying a top-of-the-range barrel-fermented chardonnay from Domaine de Tariquet with a foie gras terrine at Club Gascon, the Michelin-starred London restaurant that probably has more experience than any other in matching foie gras. They also pair oaked white Bordeaux - an M de Malle - with another preparation of smoked foie gras with pine needles. 'You don't want too sweet a wine with foie gras because it is already quite heavy? says the restaurant's sommelier Stephanie Delmotte.

Personally I've found that sweet wines such as Sauternes or Monbazillac work better with cold foie gras dishes (whether goose or duck) than with seared ones where you need a more powerful contrast to the richness of the dish particularly if there is accompanying fruit on the plate. A lightly chilled Banyuls for example can be good with a foie gras dish that includes some kind of red fruit or compote. Club Gascon even turns to sparkling cider with a dish of foie gras and apples.

Foie gras is also of course served as part of main course meat dishes such as Tournedos Rossini or other steak and game dishes. At La Petite Maison in Mayfair they pair their signature dish of roast Blackleg chicken with foie gras with a glass of Savigny-les-Beaune for example. Personally I'd go for something a bit more serious - something like a Chambolle-Musigny or Vosne-Romanée or other top quality pinot noir with a bit of bottle age, a Côte-Rotie or other high quality Syrah, or even - if the meat was rich enough - a mature red Bordeaux or Meritage blend. (What you don't want with something as delicate as foie gras is obtrusive tannins so avoid blockbuster young reds.)

Oysters
Oysters are a traditional part of the French Christmas and 'reveillon' (New Year) celebrations, usually served 'au nature' without any accompaniments. Personally I think that's the best way to appreciate their clean, marine flavour and velvety texture, using the wine itself as a seasoning.

The wines that work best for me are the classics - young, unoaked Chablis being probably more suitable for festive drinking than the lesser (though equally successful) Muscadet and Picpoul de Pinet. A genuinely dry, fresh, mineral champagne (see caviare above) also hits the spot. Ruinart Sommelier of the Year, Nicolas Clerc of the Milestone Hotel in Kensington, recommends Champagne Vouette et Sorbée "Blanc d'Argile", Brut Non-Dosé

If you want to drink a slightly fuller champagne or white burgundy I've found that serving your oysters with a small squeeze of lemon creates a more harmonious pairing. These wines also work better with dishes that include cooked oysters such as deep-fried oysters.

If you're celebrating in the southern hemisphere of course you may well be accompanying your oysters with more punchy flavourings such as citrus and coriander and even chillies which lead more in the direction of a zesty white than a minerally one in which case I'd be going for something like a Verdelho, top quality Pinot Grigio or a crisp, unoaked cool climate Sauvignon Blanc

Truffles
Possibly the most wine-friendly of all luxury ingredients, truffles are the ideal accompaniment to a fine wine - white, red or sparkling. White truffles, with their exotically scented aromas and flavours always strike me as the perfect accompaniment to vintage champagne, aged white burgundy or other top quality chardonnays which love umami-rich foods.

Ironically though in Piedmont, land of white truffles, they predominantly pair red wines such as Barolo and Barbaresco with them which works incredibly well with their egg-rich pasta. Mature red burgundy and other top quality pinot noir is also a strong contender particularly if there's chicken or guineafowl in the dish.

Black truffles, which are more commonly combined with meat or game, are one of the best ingredients to match with top Bordeaux (especially Cabernet-dominated blends) and top Rhone reds such as Côte Rôtie or their new world equivalents. if you're bringing out one of your best reds for the festive season find some way to incorporate truffles - or at the very least - mushrooms in the dish.

Jamon Iberico
Ham never used to be thought of as a luxury ingredient but the wider availability of top quality ham from Spain and Italy has changed all that. And with its ease of preparation it makes an ideal dish for entertaining. The first really striking match I discovered with both Pata Negra, the famous Spanish acorn-fed ham and Culatello, the top artisanal ham from the Parma region of Italy was Dom Pérignon whose winemaker Richard Geoffroy is a genius at creating headline-grabbing pairings. It works brilliantly well at cutting through the sweet fat of the meat but I'm not sure I don't prefer the more authentic pairing of an old dry amontillado or palo cortado sherry. You can also accompany it very enjoyably with a Rioja gran reserva or an old white Rioja - the perfect snack between all those festive blow-outs.

Smoked salmon
Salmon has become so ubiquitous I'm not sure it strictly qualifies as a luxury any more. Or not if it's farmed, at least. However if you're serving it at a party that might well be the kind you go for. It might also - like caviar - have some quite robust accompaniments that might lead you in the direction of a zesty Sauvignon Blanc or a dry riesling rather than the more obvious pairing of champagne or champagne lookalikes. (Additions that will make sparkling wine work better are canapé bases like croutons or choux puffs and creamy fillings or toppings.)

Wild salmon (the best, I've found, comes from Ireland rather than Scotland) deserves rather more respect. If you want an entirely different taste sensation I suggest you serve it, like pata negra ham, pure and unadorned with either chilled manzanilla sherry from a freshly opened bottle or, if you have wine geek friends to impress, Xavier Rousset of Texture recommends the sherry-like Vernaccia di Oristano from Sardinia. I also have a weakness, on the 'match the terroir' principle, for a dram of a top quality malt whisky such as Springbank.

Hand-made chocolates/artisan chocolate bars
Chocolate desserts are a notorious minefield for wine but artisanal chocolates and chocolate bars, which tend to be less sweet and eaten cold rather than molten, are a different matter, as I discovered from attending Roberto Bava's fascinating presentation at a Decanter Fine Wine Encounter last year. There the ultimate match was a bitter-sweet Barolo Chinato.

A useful rule of thumb in pairing wine with chocolate is that if the wine contains a flavour that works as a chocolate filling then the wine will match too (which accounts for the lack of success one tends to have with lemon or grape-flavoured dessert wines). Sweet red wines - or liqueurs for that matter - with dark plum or cherry flavours (such as a vintage port or black muscat) or orange-flavoured ones (such as Passito di Pantelleria) work particularly well as do wines with treacle toffee, fig or rasin flavours such as ultra sweet, Pedro-Ximenez-based sherries and Australian liqueur muscats.

Happily there seem to be more red dessert wines around than used to be the case such as the Abbazia di Novacella Moscato Rosa 'Praepositus' from the Alto Adige I tasted recently. Even Hardy's produces a very chocolate-friendly wine - the Nottage Hill Dessert Shiraz.

Vacherin Mont D'Or
Forget stilton (or rather, don't forget it but stick to the port) there is no better seasonal treat than a Vacherin Mont d'Or. And - with the possible exception of an overripe Epoisses, Langres or Maroilles - no harder cheese to match. If there is a red that works I've yet to come across it.

Top London cheesemonger, Patricia Michelson of La Fromagerie, recommends
a vin jaune or Côtes du Jura (a blend of Chardonnay and Savignin) which is certainly the classic, on-the-spot pairing but these wines are hard to find and not to everyone's taste. Vintage champagne is also an option but not always what one is looking for with cheese which leaves one with aromatic whites.

'A perfectly ripe Vacherin Mont d'Or, oozing with funky fruit aromas, is an extraordinary thing to eat with a 15- to 20-year-old auslese, which by then has developed a singular smoky aroma reminiscent of kerosene? Eric Asimov of the New York Times suggested a few weeks ago. I also very much enjoyed a Vacherin recently with Laurent Miquel's Verité, a top quality viognier from the Languedoc.

Award-winning sommelier Nicolas Clerc suggests serving the cheese with toasted hazelnut bread and adding a julienne of raw cepes 'to reach another dimension of pleasure? Well, I'm sure we're all up for that!

This article was first published in the January 2008 edition of Decanter magazine

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Dans Le Noir?

I’m sitting in the pitch dark, my hand groping around the table. On my plate I think I’ve got some tuna - or is it chicken? - orange, fennel and yes, those are pomegranate seeds. In my heavy glass (so it doesn’t shatter if I knock it over) is what tastes like a commercial Vin de Pays d’Oc chardonnay.

Well, I’m right about the food - it is tuna - but the wine is a South African Colombard/Chardonnay, according to the manager at London’s latest eating experience Dans Le Noir? where diners eat in total darkness. It’s a strange experience, having to be guided by the (blind) waiter, take things on trust, rely on touch and hearing. (The question mark at the end of the restaurant name indicates that it may be you, not the waiter who is in the dark).

Being more used to blind tasting I feel more confident with the wine, but even that, as we all know, can play tricks. One French critic in Paris where the company originated apparently mistook his red for a white. And it’s not helped by staff themselves being somewhat vague about what they’re serving. My wine-savvy companion and I were convinced that the second wine that arrived was a new world merlot and not the Cotes du Rhone they later claimed. (They don’t tell you what you’re eating or drinking at the time). But I guess it’s easy to get bottles mixed up in the dark.

It made me realise how important senses other than taste and smell are in the enjoyment of wine. What a wine looks like sets up an expectation not only of what it will taste like but how it’s going to go with the food. Serve a red wine with a piece of lightly poached white fish and you’re braced for disappointment, past experience prompting you that this isn’t going to work. Conversely having a well established match like oysters and Chablis in front of you primes you for success.

Colour can also influence the perception of a wine and food match. A pale coloured ros with a steak is not simply a matter of taste. It doesn’t look right. Pair it with rare lamb and you feel it might be OK. The light, glinting green-gold through a glass of sauvignon blanc, together with the cool feel of the side of the glass just after the wine has been poured sets you up for a pleasurable match with a seafood salad just as much as its crisp citrussy aroma.

The French seem to be particularly into this multi-sensory approach to dining. In Lille there is a restaurant called Avec Les Doigts which dispenses with knives, forks and plates while at the French-owned Novotel West in Hammersmith the management has introduced a ‘5 senses’ tasting and dining experience as a team building exercise for companies.

“It shows how much sight overrides taste” says Isabelle Macart who leads the sessions. “For example, we give people two yoghurts - one pink and one yellow - and people think the pink one tastes of strawberry. But in fact they are both lemon-flavoured. We do a parmesan ice cream that people assume is vanilla. It gets people talking about what they are tasting and gets them to see their colleagues in a different light. Everyone experiences the world in different ways depending on their background and culture.” Macart is looking for ways to incorporate wine into the experience. “We’d like to start with the wine and then get people chosing their food.”

It’s long been known too that the colour and shape of a glass can influence one’s appreciation of the liquid inside. Pour even the finest wine into a chunky tumbler or a plastic cup and it won’t taste as good. Pour it in a glass designed to accentuate its individual character, as Riedel does, and you’ll see the wine in quite a different way. Riedel has also introduced an opaque black glass to assist sommeliers and buyers in making judgements on taste alone. “Sight is incredibly important in terms of the judgement we make about a wine” says UK managing director Steve McGraw. “If it’s dark red we decide it’s full bodied before it even passes our lips.” Temperature too can make a difference. “You can easily mistake a white rioja for a light red if it’s served at room temperature.”

And what about sound? Could the ambient noise change the way you perceive wine? Absolutely according to researchers from the University of Leicester who conducted an experiment in a wine shop, playing French and German music. On French music days 77% of the wine sold was French while 73% of sales were German when German music was played. Other experiments have shown that customers are more likely to trade up when they listen to classical music. (See www.mindhacks.com)

You also realise how much dining experience is affected by ambience, human interaction and mood. If you feel uncomfortable in a restaurant because of loud neighbours, because the sommelier puts you down or because you’re rowing with your partner it will inevitably reflect how positive you feel about the food and wine. Anything that takes you out of your comfort zone takes the relaxation factor out of meal. Wine-loving hosts underestimate the stress those ‘guess the bottle’ games cause where some guests are bound to end up looking foolish.

Could you dine in the dark at home? No reason why not so long as you deal with the inevitable hazards posed by hot food and sharp implements. It’s a surprisingly intimate experience - one which would be considerably enhanced by using top quality ingredients which I have to say Dans Le Noir’s were not and by someone talking you through what was coming. A comparative champagne and caviare tasting maybe? Bolly, Beluga and Bach. Now you’re talking . . .

Dans Le Noir? is at 30-31 Clerkenwell Green, London EC1 44 20 253 1100. To book the Novotel Five Senses experience call Isabelle Macart on 0208 237 7451

This article was first published in the September 2006 issue of Decanter

The fantastic world of Heston Blumenthal

A small trolley is wheeled to the side of the table. it carries a gueridon (table top cooker) and a box of eggs. With great ceremony the maitre d’ breaks two of the eggs, squirts over some liquid nitrogen and proceeds to ‘scramble’ them in a copper pan. Within seconds he has a smoked bacon and egg ice cream which he lays alongside a slice of caramelised pain perdu toast and a cup of ‘hot and cold’ tea - a jellied mixture that is warm on one side of the cup and cool on the other.

We are, of course, in the legendary Fat Duck home to the fantastic (in every sense of the word) cooking of chef-owner Heston Blumenthal. It’s a typical Blumenthal dish - playful, delicious and wildly ingenious. The eggs are not ordinary eggs at all. The contents have been sucked out, the shells sterilised and they have been filled with a custard mixture that has already been scrambled and pureed. When the mixture hits the pan the liquid nitrogen makes them sizzle. It illustrates what Blumenthal calls ‘the importance of context’ - when we see the pan we expect the eggs to cook.

Blumenthal is as excited as a small boy about the invention - or rather reinvention. This is a dish that has been on the menu for several years but which he is constantly seeking to perfect. Maybe a dinner of the wine world’s great and the good gathered to celebrate the launch of the wildly expensive new Dom Perignon rose 1998 is not quite the occasion to do it but Blumenthal obviously can’t resist the opportunity to show it off. At the same meal we have a trial of a new dish which involves smelling and tasting vanilla and cinnamon one after the other. When you smell the cinnamon the vanilla taste is stronger and vice versa.

In last few years the self-taught Blumenthal has become one of most famous chefs in the world with 3 Michelin stars and a rating of 19 in Gault Millau. His website averages 75,000 hits a day. When the 3 stars were announced it went up to 300,000. Anything he does or says makes the main news pages rather than the food sections of the newspapers. “Monica (his PR) told me that would happen I but didn’t believe her” he says, looking slightly bemused. “At the end of the day I think I’m quite a normal bloke.”

So where does wine fit into all of this? Blumenthal doesn’t see himself as an expert but is fascinated by the way and the context in which a wine is served can affect our perceptions. “Think of a wonderful bottle of Muscadet sipped by the banks of the Loire on a sunny day tucking into a platter of plump fresh oysters. The same wine brought back to England doesn’t taste the same.”

The problem for him is that the majority of his diners have certain expectations of the quality of the wine that is served at a three star restaurant that may not be the best solution for the food. He admits that his list has been upgraded to accommodate more ‘big hitters’. His sommelier Isa recently offered a 265 selection of wines by the glass with the tasting menu that included Latour and Yquem. There were plenty of takers but with a menu that can easily take in 15 or more courses were they appreciated to the full? Blumenthal is non-commital simply pointing out the complicated logistics of the exercise. “With 8 different wines and water you can easily have 40-60 glasses on the table during service.”

Even at wine dinners, which happen quite frequently at the restaurant, the wines have to accommodate the food rather than vice versa. “Obviously we don’t have time to invent an entirely new range of dishes. We try to pick the ones that will show the wines at their best even if we have to jump around a bit rather than start with the lightest wine first.” Inevitably that leads to a few matches misfiring. At the recent Dom Perignon dinner, for example, the combination of the 1990 in magnum with Blumenthal’s famous snail porridge and the ‘78 with salmon poached in liquorice were sublime while the oyster and passionfruit jelly didn’t do the ‘96 any favours at all. Blumenthal abandoned the struggle altogether with a sardine on toast sorbet, sensibly opting for a sake.

In any case, Blumenthal points out, he and the winemaker are likely to be approaching any event from different starting points. “I’m a chef not a wine taster. Talking to Richard (Geoffroy - winemaker of Dom Perignon) I’m going to have different views on what the wine’s features are and how it fits in with what I’ve created. If you have a really toasty champagne you might think of partnering it with a caramelised brioche so that you pick up on the toasty note during the pairing. But that might not be the element that the winemaker wants to emphasise.”

What he tries to do is to find some element in the dish that will link to the drink. That may be a flavour link like the liquorice in the salmon dish or creating a psychological context for the match like the presentation of the bacon and egg ice cream. People’s appreciation of wine, he believes, is influenced by power of suggestion. “Someone says ‘this wine reminds me of wet bra straps’ and you say ‘ah yes’.’’

A problem is that people experience things in different ways. “Up until a couple of years ago it was considered that we had 600 taste receptors. Now they reckon we have 400 but not necessarily the same 400” explains Blumenthal. “Someone will pick up a glass of wine and smell banana but someone else may detect something different - maybe a particular banana their grandma used to keep in her fruit bowl that was very ripe.”

So far he has not yet gone down the road of analysing the composition of, say, a cabernet sauvignon and finding an ingredient which has a similar chemical composition as he did with his famous white chocolate and caviar combination though he’s started experimenting in that direction. “There’s something in Laphroaig whisky in certain concentrations that gives the leather notes you find in ripe olives. By combining the two you can enhance the characteristics of both the drink and the food.”

Increasingly Blumenthal is preoccupied with the psychological aspects of the eating experience. “Having a meal is like watching a film. You know when you get the jumpy bits you feel even more scared because the bit before has been so serene. What I’ve been thinking is that if you create comfort zones during a meal - moments when you can relax - then the more challenging dishes have more impact. It’s a bit like being on a roller coaster. When you’ve done it you have a real sense of achievement.”

Wine is obviously something that falls into the comfort zone for him. “I’m a real creature of habit. With Sunday dinner I usually open a bottle of white burgundy depending on how flush I’m feeling. I recently splashed out on an Auxey-Duresses from d’Auvenay - too young but fantastic - then I might follow it with half a bottle of shiraz. We’ve spent quite a few holidays in the Languedoc so I’ve developed a taste for the big reds from down there like Grange des Peres and Hommage a Max from Clos des Truffiers.

Fame has been a two edged sword for Blumenthal, bringing a measure of security but also an insatiable level of demand on his time. Much of the past two years since his third star was awarded have been spent setting up the expensive infrastructure for a three star restaurant which resulted in recent reports that the business was in the red. “In fact turnover is up by 40%” he points out indignantly but we’ve spend nearly a quarter of a million on the business, taking on more staff (there are now 55, including stagires (unpaid work placements) for just 42 covers) and setting up a lab and research team. He’s also had to take time off over the last few months to sort out a long standing back problem which was threatening to cripple him. “I’d get to the end of service and I literally couldn’t stand.”

Blumenthal is set to become an even bigger star when a new BBC TV series called Perfection is screened later this summer. It analyses how to perfect everyday dishes such as roast chicken, fish and chips and sausage and mash. it’s clearly been as stimulating for him as anything that goes on between the walls of the Fat Duck. “We’ve got a very exciting pizza recipe. We went over to Naples and analysed the tomatoes, the parmesan, the flour and the water. We found that they were getting their ovens up to 500 C which is way beyond any domestic oven. I even tried putting coal from the fire in a roasting tray in the oven at home - you can imagine how pleased my wife was about that. But we’ve got the recipe down to a 2 minute cook which is pretty good.” The recipe is one of only 8 in the book that accompanies the series. “A recipe book with just 8 recipes - that’s a first” says Blumenthal, grinning broadly at the thought.

Being a culinary superstar obviously sits lighty on the modest Blumenthal. “What it’s really about is enjoying myself. I get really excited about what I do. I want people coming trhough the door rubbing their hands. The problem is once you get 3 stars you get put on a pedestal . . .” He looks momentarily downcast. “Still, the time for experimentation and creativity will come back.” I don’t think many people thought it had gone away.

The Fat Duck is at 1 High Street Bray, 01628 580333 www.fatduck.co.uk

A shorter version of this feature appeared in the June issue of Decanter