So what DO you pair with a blockbuster cabernet?

Talk to chefs and sommeliers about the wines they like to match with food and only rarely will Cabernet Sauvignon crop up. Many are, in fact, quite openly critical of the blockbuster style of many modern cabs.

Even Robert Parker, when I interviewed him a few years ago, expressed a preference for simple unoaked wines from the Rhone for much of his everyday drinking. Presumably though purchasers of the new world’s top cabernets are not just buying them to lie around their cellars. Somebody out there is enjoying them - but with what?

The obvious answer would seem to be large hunks of rare, red meat but not everyone is convinced about that. “I find that simple grilled meats like steaks have insufficient power to keep up with some of these wines” admits South African chef Pete Goff-Wood of Eat in Capetown. “The only way to prevent the wine from taking over completely is to go the slow-braised route with something like oxtail or a good daube of beef.”

Some fattiness in the meat is also a help with younger cabernets. Dishes like braised belly of pork or shoulder of lamb can kick a tannic cab into touch better than a super-lean cut like fillet. That needs to be balanced with a certain amount of acidity in the view of John Campbell, chef of The Vineyard at Stockcross who has many top quality Californian Cabernets on his list. “Sherry vinegar is ideal as it allows the fruit and the tannins in the wine to overlay the dish harmoniously.”

“In general the younger the wine the saltier, sweeter and fatter the food needs to be to go well with it” says former sommelier Larry Stone, now general manager of the Rubicon Estate. Undoubtedly there is a difference between European and American palates when it comes how meat is seasoned and what is served as an accompaniment which makes the American palate more tolerant to intense fruit flavours. “American chefs like to cook with fruit and serve it as an accompaniment to savoury courses probably more than our European counterparts” says Karen Cakebread of Cakebread Cellars. “One example that comes to mind would be venison or other wild game like duck with huckleberry sauce. The wild berry flavours in the sauce act as a natural bridge to the wines picked at these higher sugar levels.”

On the other hand one of the US top experts in food and wine matching Andrea Robinson points out that bitterness can also contribute to a successful match. “Bitter-edged veggies like broccoli rabe, grilled radicchio and roasted brussel sprouts are real winners. I also find the more pungent, piney herbs like rosemary basil and thyme really work well to pull out the cedar/eucalyptus elements in these wines.” (To which I would also add mint)

Australian food writer Lyndey Milan author of ‘Balance: Matching Food and Wine’ reckons the flavours of North African cuisine are particularly sympathetic to Australian cabernets. “Red meats flavoured with sweet aromatic spices like cumin, coriander and cinnamon (not chilli) work well especially with the older ‘two tooth’ type of lamb.” Cakebread backs her up on Moroccan flavours, pointing to the softening effect salty ingredients such as capers, olives and preserved lemons can have on the tannins of more robust wines.

Richly flavoured carbs also build a bridge to big cabs. A luxurious mash with plenty of butter and cream, a rich cheesey polenta or some earthy, mealy beans all have a mouthcoating quality that will mitigate tough tannins.

The way a wine is treated can also make it more food-friendly. “Critics of high alcohol wines are often complaining about temperature” says John Campbell. “If a wine is above 18 degrees C the alcohol volatility is increased and takes over from the true flavour of the cabernet. These wines really need to be drunk between 14 and 16 degrees.” Larry Stone agrees. “Many people who complain about the alcohol in Californian wines are very happy to recommend sake which often pushes to 17% ABV. Part of the reason for its greater acceptability is that it is served cool. I also tend to pay attention to the temperature a big, bold wine is served and may serve it at a cooler temperature if I feel the balance of fruit intensity is being outweighed by the perception of alcohol.”

Economic pressures and consumer demand on scarce wines also result in wines being released earlier than they ideally should be. Once no-one would have dreamt of drinking a top Bordeaux within the first five years of its life yet according to Janet Trefethen of Trefethen Vineyards “over 90% of US consumers age their wine in the back of their car en route from the grocery store to the dinner table. We are drinking our cabernets too young” she admits. Michel Roux of Le Gavroche, author of Matching Food and Wine, agrees. “The minimum should be 5 years - 7 years to be food-friendly. Ten years is better.” (I agree with him up to a point though I’d probably drink my cabernet a couple of years younger than he would.)

My own tips would be to avoid vast pools of intense winey reductions which are too similar to cabernet in flavour and consistency. Just serve a couple of spoonfuls of the accompanying jus and let the cabernet help with the job of saucing. Caramelised onions always seem to help matching big wines as does roasted or slow-cooked garlic. My ideal match would be a spice crusted barbecued butterflied leg of lamb which included salt, rosemary and cumin in the spice mix. I’d defy anyone not to enjoy a cabernet - blockbuster or otherwise - with that.

Love it
I don’t see a problem in matching big red wines especially not with such a classic grape variety as cabernet. To take such a position as a sommelier or wine writer seems oddly narrow-minded to me
Larry Stone, Rubicon Estate

Linguine pasta with mushrooms and caramelized onions with a touch of thyme leads me to the Cabernet/Bordeaux section of the cellar.
Janet Trefethen

Loathe it
I hate this fashion for big, extracted wines - the Parkerized wines of high alcohol and low tannins. I find them obvious and vulgar.
Raymond Blanc

They (blockbuster reds) are made to explode in front of the competition at wine tastings but they’re not that food friendly.
Heston Blumenthal

Cutting edge cabernet pairings:
Squab, treacle and rhubarb - John Campbell of The Vineyard at Stockcross

Lievre a la royale - Benoit Allauzen, sommelier at the Greenhouse, London

Well hung loin of wildebeest - Pete Goffe Wood, Eat, Capetown

Pot roast pork shoulder with prunes - Michel Roux, Le Gavroche

A good macaroni and cheese - US food and wine writer Andrea Robinson

Venison with huckleberry sauce - Karen Cakebread, Cakebread Cellars

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

Photo © Davidoff777 - Fotolia.com

An overview of the 2010 Penfolds releases and 2008 Grange

Regular contributor and former sommelier Donald Edwards tastes his way through the latest Penfolds' releases and is blown away by a cabernet.

"In early modern Australia people used to speak of the tyranny of distance; even within the same state two neighbouring cattle stations could be a couple of weeks ride from each other. The distance was unlike anything the settlers had ever known; vast swathes of red dirt, whole oceans of subtly differentiated sand and dust.

I occasionally wonder whether Penfolds' chief wine maker Peter Gago feels something similar, only relating to choice. Oceans of the very best grape juice; plot after plot of ancient vines, legions of the country's best grape growers all lining up to have their best efforts considered for a spot in Penfolds' top blends. The tyranny of choice? I sometimes wonder.

I’d missed out on meeting Gago when I visited the Magill estate that is Penfolds' home base (he was in America giving the Kings of Leon a private masterclass) so I jumped at the chance to join him for a tasting of Penfolds newly released 2010s and 2008s.

If you don’t already know the story of Penfolds' Grange and its origins as Max Schubert's experimental blend, its underground years and eventual ascent to the very pinnacle of Australian wine then it’s well worth a read.

Suffice it to say, Grange is always a multi-region blend of mostly (occasionally 100%) Shiraz with a small blending component of Cabernet Sauvignon. One of the great advantages that Penfolds has is a huge array of choice in blending components.

Take the 2008 for example: it’s 89% Barossa fruit, 9% Clare Valley (for the first time in a while) with 2% of their old vine Magill Estate fruit. For the 2008 wine only 2% Cabernet Sauvignon was used. By way of comparison the 1978 that we tasted alongside boasted 10% (and a noticeable herbal tinge with it too).

Anyway, the afternoon started with a tasting of Penfolds newly released 2010 vintage (followed by the Granges). Penfolds has attracted some criticism recently for their pricing, the new Grange topping £400 a bottle on release. However the more Peter Gago described the issues they face as a company - i.e. not having anywhere near enough stock to satisfy international demand - it became clear that they’re merely reacting to market forces (and in a less manipulative way than the Bordelais).

To put it bluntly, they’ve a lot of exceptional wines, they work hard to ensure that the wines they release are top quality and many of the wines have great track records when it comes to ageing gracefully. To wit: why would they not raise their prices to what they deem is acceptable for what amounts to a slice of Australia’s viticultural history? Oh, and finally, they often don’t release wines if they feel the quality isn’t right in any given year.

The tasting opened with Penfolds Yattarna Chardonnay 2010. Yattarna Chardonnay for me is like a microcosm of Australian white wine making. It was first conceived as being a white Grange, but looking through the blends and the styles that have graced the bottles through the years it is obvious that it’s a mirror for the way that Australian chardonnay has changed as a style.

No longer a byword for obvious cellar techniques and big oak, the 2010 is 96% Tasmanian fruit (Australia’s coolest region) and it’s obvious why. The extra ripening time has allowed great natural acidity to coexist with lean oatmeal leasiness, a nice pebbly minerality and some taut stone fruit characters. I was mildly annoyed I only had a tasting measure.

On to the reds; old Shiraz and Grenache vines are to my mind one of Australia’s greatest treasures. Penfolds are lucky in that they have the Magill estate, ancient ungrafted vines right in the outskirts of Adelaide, St Henri and a number of other choice plots to call upon. This means that along with their flagship Grange and RWT (red winemaking trial, basically Grange with French oak) wines, they can offer several single vineyard wines. These are collectors’ items in their own right. St Henri Shiraz from a good vintage can often outpace the same year's Grange at auction.

Marananga Shiraz, a sub-regional blend from the Barossa made with a mixture of French and American oak, was lightly spiced with surprisingly fresh fruit characters and a delightfully smooth and silken set of tannins. The St Henri Shiraz was far less forthcoming; a tight mineral core and an interesting (non oak-related) tannic structure; as always a keeper. The Penfolds home estate Magill Shiraz, textured, slightly dusty, again complex and lengthy.

Bin 707, Penfolds' top Cabernet, is again always a blend (and their quickest wine to sell out every year), however for me the standout cabernet from the tasting was the Bin 169 single plot Coonawarra cabernet. (I’ve been feeling a better vineyard practices-related renaissance coming from Coonawarra cab for a while now, but that’s another matter).

This was just about the finest young Australian cabernet I’ve tasted in a very long time. Subtly perfumed, not just blackcurrant leaf and mint, but a finer, much more delicate floral herbal character, backed up with taut muscular tannins and not a jot of fat in the wrong place.

A four-decade vertical of Grange stretching from the misty past of 1978 (before I was born), through 1988, 1998 and finishing at the hallowed 100-point-garnering 2008 took us neatly to a short lunch.

I mentioned the tyranny of choice earlier. There is simply so much quality in the Penfolds' catalogue that trying to pick a single wine as a favourite from the tasting ends up being almost as trying as making the quality decisions must be for Gago and his team.

Donald Edwards is a former sommelier, barfly and blogger at St Claire and notes from the dregs. He tweets as @donalde

In search of the perfect steak wine

This report on a steak and wine tasting I did at Hawksmoor Spitalfields back in 2007 is now over 10 years old but the advice still holds good. It's quite a long read though so for more concise steak and wine matching advice head to The Best Wine Pairings for Steak.

"When my son Will was born in 1977 I couldn’t have imagined that 30 years on we’d be sitting together in his restaurant discussing food and wine matching. But as co-owner of an award-winning American-style steakhouse and cocktail bar, Hawksmoor, he and his restaurant manager Nick Strangeway (now with Hix restaurants) were the ideal people to help me decide what makes the perfect steak wine.

The plan was to see what impact cooking steak for different lengths of time had on the bottles you choose. Nick was also of the view that we should see what effect different cuts made which, fascinatingly, proved as significant as the cooking time.

Ironically Will and I started from unexpectedly different standpoints: Will being of the opinion that more mature, classic wines such as Bordeaux and Rioja were the best match for steak while I favoured younger New World reds with firmer tannins. We both had cause to revise our views.

Fillet

Meat at the restaurant is sourced from one of London’s top butchers The Ginger Pig from Longhorn cattle raised in North Yorkshire so even the fillet was exceptionally full flavoured, but its smooth, soft texture made it the subtlest of the steaks we tasted - “the kind of steak to serve with a salad for a light lunch” as Nick put it.

I don’t normally think of Pinot Noir as a match for steak but the best pairing by far when it was cooked rare, was the most elegant of our wines, a classically silky, seductive 2001 Daniel Rion Vosne-Romanée. A 2002 Au Bon Climat ‘Knox Alexander’ Pinot Noir tasted slightly too sweet but worked better when the flllet was served medium-rare and had acquired more caramelisation (at which point it slightly overwhelmed the Vosne-Romanée) It was also good if you served the fillet with béarnaise sauce (see below). The medium-rare fillet also went particularly well well with a Guidalberto 2005, the second wine of Tenuta San Guido, again a beautifully balanced wine with a marked level of acidity, a much more important factor in matching fillet than tannin, at least when the meat is unsauced.

Bone-in sirloin

Sirloin, in Nick’s view, is the ideal cut for serving blue because it has so much flavour of its own it doesn’t need to rely on caramelisation. This was where I thought our most tannic wine, a blockbuster Montus La Tyre 2005 Madiran from Alain Brumont would score. It was a fair match, but the barely cooked meat had the effect of unbalancing the wine and making it taste slightly sweet, as it did a 2003 Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe from Château La Nerthe. The two outstanding matches were a 2000 Ridge Monte Bello and a 2001 Pichon-Longueville, both still quite youthful so the barely cooked meat had the effect of making them taste at their peak.

The Pichon-Longueville and Ridge also showed well when the sirloin was cooked medium-rare, as did a very attractive 1996 Château St Pierre St-Julien which surprisingly turned out to be one of the star wines of the tasting. We both found a 2004 Catena Alta Malbec and a 2004 Turkey Flat Barossa Shiraz tasted slightly too sweet.

Rib-eye

Rib-eye has more fat than other cuts so Nick advises his customers to go for a slightly longer cooking time to allow it to integrate with the meat. It makes for a juicier and more flavourful steak. Here it was fascinating how much difference the cooking time made. When it was served rare it paired best with a 2003 Champin Le Seigneur Côte Rôtie from Jean-Michel Gerin and a 2003 Collazzi Toscana (a ‘cut price super Tuscan’ according to Nick), both generous, ripe and full-bodied.

Once it was cooked medium-rare both those wines showed more youthful angularity and the smoother Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe and Catena Alta Malbec became the better matches. When it was medium/well done, the longest cooked steak we had in the tasting, it changed again, tuning in with the riper, more fruit-driven wines from an inexpensive 2004 Hawk Crest Cabernet Sauvignon to the Ridge Monte Bello. The Vosne-Romanée we’d enjoyed with the fillet, by contrast, didn’t taste as remotely as good.

Hanger/bavette

Severely steaked out by this stage, we only tried one serving of hanger (served rare) just out of interest to see what the chewier texture of this favourite French cut would do. We liked it best, appropriately enough with two of the more inexpensive wines, a 2005 I Bastioni Chianti Classico and a gutsy 2004 Domaine de la Renjarde Côtes du Rhône Villages the one for its acidity, the other for its rusticity.

Overall conclusions

This tasting was a real eye opener with both Will and I revising our cherished opinions about wine and steak. In a nutshell - and it is a gross simplification because it doesn’t fully take into account different sauces and sides - if you like your steak rare stick to leaner, more classic wines whereas if you like it better done (and therefore more heavily caramelised) go for riper, more fruit driven ones. If you like fillet, try red burgundy, Pinot Noir or a modern Italian red, with sirloin drink cabernet or merlot, especially red Bordeaux, and with rib-eye go for a Châteauneuf, Côte Rôtie or other Syrah or Shiraz or a top Tuscan red.

Of course it doesn’t quite work out like that in a restaurant, as Nick pointed out, as people order different cuts and want them cooked different ways so you need to find wines that perform well overall. Our most consistent bottles proved to be the ‘96 Château St Pierre St-Julien (Will’s favourite), the Collazzi (Nick’s favourite) and the Ridge Monte Bello (mine). The Catena Alta Malbec also showed well though it wasn’t our favourite wine with any of the steaks.

Disappointments were the much lauded 2004 Turkey Flat Barossa Shiraz which tasted too simple and sweet with many of the steaks (a bit of bottle age would have helped) and the Rioja in our tasting, a Marques de Vargas 2002 (much to Will’s disappointment, being a big Rioja fan). The cheaper wines, while pleasant, were largely out of their league leading us to the conclusion - and this is something that Will and I can agree on - that it’s not worth drinking minor wines with steak. At least that’s going to be our excuse from now on . . .

This tasting was based at the Spitalfields branch of Hawksmoor at 157 Commercial Street, London E1 6BJ Tel: 0207 247 7392. They have since opened branches at Seven Dials in Covent Garden and Guildhall in the City.

Sauces and sides - what difference they make

• Béarnaise - a new world Pinot Noir or even an oaked Chardonnay if you prefer white wine to red

• Creamy mustard sauces - red burgundy usually hits the spot especially with fillet

• Peppercorn sauce/steak au poivre - southern French or other blends of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre, Malbec, modern Tuscan reds like the Collazzi

• Red wine sauces e.g. marchand du vin - top red Bordeaux and other Bordeaux blends

• Ketchup - better not but if you must, a modern, young Chianti Classico or Zinfandel

• Rich potato dishes e.g. gratin dauphinois - tips the balance towards Cabernet or Cabernet blends

• Creamed spinach - depends on the amount of cream. Spinach is slightly bitter which will accentuate sweetness in a wine but cream will counteract that. Should be relatively neutral in its effect compared to the flavour of the steak.

This article was first published in the October 2007 edition of Decanter.

Which foods pair best with high alcohol red wines?

Despite the growing concern about alcohol levels in wine many reds still clock in at 14.5% or more, a level at which they can become an unbalanced pairing for traditional European food. Many traditionalist would say that they are therefore not ‘food wines’ but as with other types of wine it depends how well they’re made and whether overall the wine is in balance. Châteauneuf-du-Pâpe for example rarely hits the shelves at under 14% but wears its alcohol lightly.

In general wines of this power benefit from at least a couple of years bottle ageing - it’s the combination of high alcohol and aggressive tannins that can overwhelm the food you’re eating. I’ve drunk many an Australian Shiraz of 7 to 8 years old that has behaved like a pussycat with food.

The best type of dishes in my view to drink with big reds are:

• Rare meat especially beef - e.g. a chargrilled steak (rare meat softens the effect of big tannins)

• Slow cooked but not heavily sauced meat (lamb and pork as well as beef) Not heavily sauced because if you have an intense reduction and a full-bodied red you can barely taste the meat you’re eating

• Meat cooked with a sweet marinade or baste - e.g. barbecued ribs Sweetness will enhance the acidity in the wine, making it taste fresher.
• Meat or ‘meaty’ fish like tuna cooked with a spicy rub or crust. A touch of spice offsets a big fruity red nicely though not a hot ‘wet’ curry with a lot of spicy sauce which will just create an sense of overload on the palate.

• Haggis! (Yes, really . . . )

• Strongly flavoured vegetarian dishes based on dark Portabella mushrooms or roast or baked aubergines

• Well matured hard cheeses or sheep's cheeses. Cheese can be a minefield for red wine as regular visitors to this site will know. A full bodied red will overwhelm delicate goats’ cheeses and are likely to clash horribly with a well-matured ‘stinky’ washed rind cheese or a punchy blue but should be OK with a dry, clean tasting hard cheese, especially a sheep's cheese (the easiest cheese to pair with red wine)

• Dark chocolate. A controversial pairing but many swear by big jammy reds and dark, not oversweet chocolate. Not for me but try it!

And the dishes that don’t match full-bodied reds?

Lighter fish and vegetable-based dishes, lighter meats like chicken and veal, milder cheeses and dishes with light creamy sauces.

Image © Christian Delbert - Fotolia.com