What to drink with a kebab - and it's not lager!

Inspired by the British Kebab awards Zeren Wilson wonders what the perfect wine pairing is for a kebab and comes up with some surprising conclusions.

Zeren writes: "Something is stirring in the world of Turkish dining in London, a subtle shifting of the landscape. This week the 2014 British Kebab Awards were held in the Park Lane Sheraton, a celebration of the finest purveyors of this most primal and visceral form of eating, that of slamming bits of animal over white hot coals (sometimes the skewer is flourished), turning them every now and again, and waiting until they are done.

The roots of the Turkish word kebap can be traced back to Mesopotamia, it's origins arriving through the Persian and Urdu languages, with its original meaning summing things up cutely: meat cooked with flames.

As the son of a Turkish Cypriot mother, the kebab has played a role in my upbringing from a disconcertingly early age. At six months old my parents took me along to their favourite Kebab restaurant and Britain's first, Nasreddin Hoca (named after a historical Ottoman figure), and slung me under the table while they chowed on meat, hummus and garlicky yoghurt dip, cacik. If Twitter had existed back then, I would probably have sent my first tweet from under the table.

We Brits have evolved a great tradition of getting plastered on a Saturday night (as one should sometimes) and soaking up all that booze with a late night kebab, which may be a gourmet delight, but so often can be something....less appealing.

The British Kebab Awards were not bigging up the potentially shocking Elephant Leg here (which with good meat, can also be great), but rather theTurkish restaurants that have been serving up thoroughly decent meat, chargrilled with a bit of love.

Apart from hoovering up a few bottles of the Turkish lager Efes (it does a job, but won't shake your shish in an earth-changing way), there are a few styles of wine that have the weapons in their armoury to cope with the bold flavours involved and the smoke of the grill.

Turkish wines have improved considerably over recent years, but on a recent visit to Istanbul I found prohibitive taxes applied to wine, making drinking anything decent an almost impossible task without being shafted on price.

Importers in the UK have started to notice the improvements*, and one of the first to take the leap has been Armit, who bring in wines from the very decent Urla winery, which Jancis Robinson featured on her site a couple of years ago.

Turkish varietals have some wonderful names, chief among them being the burly, tannic grape Bogazkere (poetically translated as 'throat scraper'), and the somewhat fluffier, friendlier Oküzgözü* (meaning 'bull's eye', which is often blended with its more abrasive, tannic cousin to achieve balance and roundness.

A Turkish white varietal which perked up my palate was the versatile Narince, a Riesling-esque wannabe, with great acidity and a broad spectrum of fruit flavours ranging from lime and grapefruit, through to lusher tropical notes. It can also cope with a touch of oak in the right winemaker's hands.

Doluca is another example of a Turkish winery making clean, accessible wines which have the potential to enter International markets and compete on the quality front.

Let's see what else we can pour successfully when perched up against the heat of the mangal . . .

ADANA KEBAB - For me this is the 'daddy' of the kebab restaurant experience, and I never feel satisfied unless I have at least a bite of this glorious 'köfte on a stick'. Named after the fifth largest city in Turkey, this is a boldly flavoured assemblage of minced lamb meat (often with tail fat), sweet red peppers, garlic, onion, parsley, red pepper flakes, with some variations depending on the venue.

Wrapping this in a Turkish flatbread (dürüm) which has been moistened with the fat from the cooking meat, with some salad, makes for a joyous experience. A glorious version in Istanbul involved pistachio nuts. Meaty, fatty, spicy — I would go for reds with big gobs of dark fruit, a ballsy Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot, Argentinian Malbec, Aussie Shiraz - that kinda thing.

CHICKEN SHISH - The 'vanilla' of the kebab world, but some mangals marinade their chicken in such a way, that suddenly chicken is not the boring option any more. There is often some heat from the spice of the marinade involved too. A broad-shouldered white or lighter red are the wines to think about here, so perhaps New World Chardonnay that doesn't have too much of a slap of oak, such as a Chardonnay from Mornington Peninsula, Australia (I love Kooyong), or South African or New Zealand Chardonnay or white varietals with a bit of lushness to them - a New World Pinot Gris perhaps. Tempranillo from Spain, or Grenache dominated- Rhône reds should feel at home here too.

LAMB SHISH - The classic cubes of lamb shoulder are the archetypal Turkish kebab item, and no kebab feast would be complete without it. Reds from Ribera del Duero work very well here as do fuller-bodied reds from the Languedoc-Roussillon and South-West France such as Cahors. (These tend to be great value, too).

QUAIL - If you're lucky, a good mangal will have quail on the menu. A chance to pull out your favourite Pinot Noirs and lighter reds. My ideal would be a Californian Pinot Noir, something from the Sonoma Coast. Or top red Burgundy, if you are bringing the wine. Thanks.

LAMB BELLY - Another option which won't always be there but is a joy to eat, stripping the meat and fat from the bone until there is no DNA left. Reds with great acidity work best to slice through all of that fat, so good Northern Rhône Syrah is an option here: St Joseph, Cornas, or Côte-Rôtie if someone else is paying. Sonoma Coast Syrah is having a bit of a moment too. Step forward, Arnot-Roberts Syrah, which is brought in by Roberson Wines.

Any kebab feast will involve a whole host of flavours, a melange of spice and fat, meat and smoke, and it may be hot, sweaty, and bloody noisy. When it comes down to these myriad factors, wine matching thankfully takes a step back from the discussions of perfect wine combos and you may end up surprising yourself with the combinations that work.

I enjoyed a white that sailed through every course without flinching in the face of the assault of smoke, meat, spice and fat-slicked fingers. This accolade fell to Ataraxia Chardonnay 2012, from South Africa, made by husband and wife team Kevin and Hanli Grant. A modern barrel-fermented Chardonnay with plenty of elegance alongside the heft of New World fruit.

Right, I'm off to Green Lanes in Harringay**, N16, for the mother of all kebab crawls...

* Marks & Spencer has recently started listing one which I made my wine of the week a few weeks back.

** There may be those of you that wonder whether this should be Haringey. I did but Zeren assures me that's how the locals spell it!

Zeren Wilson is a food and wine writer with a background in the wine trade. He publishes his own blog Bitten & Written.

Image by Никита Лазоренко from Pixabay

Wine for turkey: the difference between a Thanksgiving turkey and a British Christmas turkey

Looking at the recipes online for Thanksgiving turkeys, stuffings and sides they’re very much sweeter (and more imaginative) than the typical UK Christmas turkey. They’re often brined, glazed or spiced (or all three), sometimes deep-fried and often accompanied by cornbread-based stuffings and sweet-tasting vegetables like sweet potatoes and squash.

The American taste in wine is also different from that in the UK - big chardonnays - actually very good with turkey - are much more popular than they are in the UK. There appears to be a preference for Cabernet over Rhone varietals such as Syrah, Grenache and Mourvèdre. And Pinot Noirs are typically much sweeter.

We Brits, although enamoured of the vibrant fruit flavours of new world wine, often revert to more traditional choices at Christmas: such as Rioja, Bordeaux and robust Rhone and southern French reds. Our stuffings and gravy may be rich but are not generally that sweet - our preferred side of sprouts actually has a touch of bitterness. Only our fondness for cranberry sauce (an American import, of course) introduces an US-style note of sweetness.

So what would my choices be? If I were cooking a Thanksgiving turkey this Thursday I would go for a lush fruity red - a Pinot, Merlot or a Zinfandel, possibly even a Grenache. I might even choose an Aussie-style sparkling red though I think that’s better suited to a southern hemisphere Christmas than a European one. I would pick a full-bodied Chardonnay (for good value I might look to Chile) or Viognier for those who wanted a white.. A fruity rosé would also work well.

For a British Christmas I’d be more inclined to abide by the findings of the Decanter tasting I ran last year where our high powered panel of chefs, sommeliers and wine writers surprisingly voted a seven year old Chassagne Montrachet (Jean-Noel Gagnard’s Les Chenevottes 1er Cru, Chassagne-Montrachet 2004) their top pick. (It proved an incredibly refreshing contrast to the richness of the bird and chestnut stuffing.)

The two most popular reds were an 11 year old Bordeaux, a Château Branaire-Ducru, St-Julien 2000 and a four year old Chateauneuf-du-Pape, the Bosquet des Papes, Chante le Merle 2007, both rich and generous but not too tannic.

Of course these were quality wines that still had a good deal of life in them - I wouldn’t necessarily recommend drinking 10 year old wines of a more modest provenance but it does suggest that the more restrained, classic style of cooking a British turkey may be the one to go for if you want to pull out that special wine. And hold that cranberry sauce . . .

Photo ©Bochkarev Photography at shutterstock.com

Pairing Errazuriz wines at Pollen Street Social

New world wines are sometimes criticised (usually by the French!) for overwhelming subtle Michelin-starred food but award-winning blogger Jeanne Horak-Druiff of Cooksister found much to admire when she attended an Errazuriz food, wine and photography evening at Pollen Street Social.

"We kicked off with three amuse-bouches on which to practise our smartphone photography" Jeanne reports: "soft cooked Italian egg with tomato fondant, mushroom purée, potato foam and bacon powder, venison terrine crostini and a spoonful of lobster, apple, fennel and avocado which went particularly well with the Errázuriz Aconcagua Costa single vineyard Sauvignon Blanc we’d been handed on arrival - the food brought out a pronounced gooseberry flavour in the wine which was quite delicious.

This was followed by another round of amuse-bouches consisting of puffed pork skin with seaweed salt, parmesan biscuits with smoked tomato chutney and fennel seed crackers with ricotta - with the intensely flavoured biscuits and smoky chutney being my runaway favourite.

With our delicately beautiful starter of Colchester crab salad rolls with coriander pineapple, shiso leaf, compressed fennel and espelette pepper we sampled the 2013 Aconcagua Costa Sauvignon Blanc again (13% alc, RRP £12.49) - a clear pale yellow with a hint of green; a rich nose of gooseberries, cut grass and green tomato; and a palate of tropical fruit (guavas, passion fruit) but well balanced by good structure and acidity and

Aconcagua Costa single vineyard wild fermented Chardonnay 2011 (13.5% alc, RRP £15.99). This wine spent 10 months in oak and it certainly shows in the rich golden colour! I loved the opulent nose of apricot and creamy vanilla scents and the rich mouthfeel. Nevertheless, the palate is not over-oaked nor as overwhelmingly creamy as the nose might suggest but rather balanced and elegant with notes of citrus and minerality to match the ripeness.

The Chardonnay was definitely my favourite match with the crab rolls, having enough complexity to stand up to the more strident flavours of the dish without overwhelming the more subtle ones.

For our main course we had perfectly pink Lake District rack of lamb, a fritter of braised lamb shoulder, fregola pasta in basil, olive powder, artichokes and more of that fabulous smoked tomato chutney. To match this, we tried two of the estate's reds:

· Aconcagua Costa wild fermented Pinot Noir 2011 (13.5% alc, RRP £24.00). An odd, slightly foxy or wild nose, but with good colour for a Pinot Noir, the wine was less full-bodied than I had expected, with a subtle spiciness soft tannins. It made a good match for the lamb though, emphasising the subtle gamey notes in the meat.

· Aconcagua Costa Single Vineyard Syrah 2011 (14% alc. RRP £19.99) This was by far my favourite red wine of the night with its deep inky purple colour and rich dark berry nose reminiscent of Ribena for grown-ups. The palate was equally lush and appealing, full of the autumnal flavours of ripe blackberries and blackcurrants, but with soft vanilla notes and hints of Christmas spices with a long finish. For me, though, this was a sipping wine rather than a food wine as food took the edge off the lush fruitiness and made the finish seem shorter.

With our cheese course of three cheeses (a Camembert-style cheese, a hard cheese along the lines of a Comté, and a third creamy soft cheese) together with crackers and homemade chutney we were served two of the estate's premium red blends:

· Don Maximiano Founder's Reserve 2008 - 82% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Petit Verdot, 6% Cabernet Franc 6% Syrah (14.5% alc. RRP £50). This was in total contrast to the heavy, perfumed Syrah - a far lighter colour and palate full of ripe red berries as opposed to dark berries, with peppery notes and lovely balanced tannins. It seemed a lighter wine than the Syrah, despite its higher alcohol and although I liked it, I did not think it was a great match for the cheese, which seemed to emphasise the wine's acidity.

· Kai Carmenère 2010 - 96% Carmenère, 4% Petit Verdot (14.5% alc. RRP £90) This had a deep, velvety purple colour and a nose with vegetal hints but also dark red fruits and fig preserve. On the palate, there were grippy tannins and good structure with restrained fruit and flavours of Christmas cake. I found this to be an outstanding match for the cheese which seemed to bring out lovely fresh fig and peaty whisky flavours in the wine. Lovely as it was, I do have to wonder who this wine is aimed at, with a price tag of nearly one hundred pounds?

As we sat around finishing the last of the wine, we were served a wonderfully light and refreshing dessert of mandarin sorbet topped with yoghurt cream and kafir lime shavings; and those of us who had the shortest journey home and could afford to linger the longest were also rewarded with glorious little warm financiers with a centre of raspberry jam, fresh from the oven."

To read about the food photography element of the evening with photographer Paul Winch-Furness read the second part of Jeanne’s report here.

DISCLOSURE: Jeanne attended this event as a guest of Errázuriz Estate and R&R Teamwork. All opinions are her own.

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