Pairing cheese and claret

I’ve always had a bit of a problem finding cheese matches for red Bordeaux. Cheddar is often suggested but I find mature versions have too much ‘bite’. Stilton slays it and so do most washed rind cheeses, oozy Camemberts and Bries . . .

The most successful match I’ve found so far is Mimolette so maybe it was auto-suggestion at work when I tasted a deep orange Red Leicester at The Fine Cheese Co’s Cheese Fair in Bath at the weekend and immediately thought of red Bordeaux.

It was the Sparkenhoe Red Leicester from David and Jo Clarke of the Leicestershire Handmade Cheese Co. a revival of an old recipe and a lovely mellow, typically English cheese. Extraordinarily it hasn’t actually been made in Leicestershire for 20 years and for even longer - over 50 years - on a farm in the county.

It has more flavour than milder cheeses like Caerphilly and Wensleydale which are better suited to a white wine in my opinion but lacks the intensity of a farmhouse cheddar which can sometimes throw a medium to full-bodied red. I tried it with a bottle of André Lurton’s 2004 Chateau La Louvire Pessac-Lognan from Bibendum, a mature Bordeaux of exactly the sort you might bring out with the cheese over Christmas and it was perfect.

Coincidentally I tried another aged Bordeaux (a 1999 Chateau Tour du Haut-Moulin which was drinking quite beautifully) with cheese the following day and found that although it was again overpowered by a ripe Brie it went really well with a Vacherin Mont d’Or, a combination I’d never have expected. I think it was probably because the cheese wasn’t that mature and the wine was. The problem with reds and cheese is mainly about unintegrated tannins. Older vintages seem to survive better.

• You can buy Sparkenhoe from The Fine Cheese Company and other stockists listed here.

Photo by Ray Piedra

What food to pair with mature Margaux

The other night I was lucky enough to go out with a wineloving friend of mine and his wife who brought along a bottle of Château Palmer 1990 with them. It was a lovely wine but, as any 20 year old vintage would be, quite delicate so immediately created the dilemma of what to eat.

The dishes we chose - braised partridge, seared breast of duck and cassoulet were all fine with it - but none of them was perfect. Wines like this are better with unsauced dishes - simply roast partridge would have been better. The seared duck was accompanied by caramelised chicory which really needed a younger, more vibrantly fruity wine and the cassoulet would have been better with a more rustic red like a Marcillac. The Palmer also struggled with the cheese, as is inevitable if you offer a selection.

It underlines a point I’ve made before that treasured bottles like this are really better served at home. No chef can really afford to serve the sort of plain, unadorned food that suits fine wine, especially Bordeaux, best. Customers would regard it as dull and take the view (quite rightly, really) that they could do the same at home.

The ideal dish would have been a simply roast leg of lamb with possibly a gratin dauphinoise (cream and potatoes flatter most old reds). Resist the temptation to serve lots of vegetables or condiments alongside because the more flavours you add the greater the risk of taking the edge off your treasured bottle. (This doesn’t apply so much, of course, to younger wines.)

So far as cheese is concerned it also pays not to offer too much choice. If you’re going to serve cheese at all a hard sheep’s cheese like a Manchego or Berkswell is going to be the best kind of foil for an old wine and again leave aside compotes and particularly chutneys. Mature parmesan can also be delicious though I’d suggest no more than two years old.

The great advantage to this strategy is that this is not difficult food to cook, you’ll enjoy your wine more and you’ll pay a fraction of what you would pay in a restaurant for it. Which is quite a result.

For more inspiration for mature Margaux, see this Match of the Week from 2017: Margaux and Turkish Chicken with Walnut Sauce

Image result: jacqueline macou from Pixabay

What to drink with a TV dinner?

This month’s issue of Observer Food Monthly hasa special on TV dinners featuring celebrities talking about their favourite snacks. Very few beverages are mentioned so I thought I’d suggest a few pairings ;-)

Indian takeaway
Amanda Holden is pictured eating pasta with pesto but actually says her regular TV supper is an Indian takeaway. Lager would be the obvious bevvy of choice for most but personally I’d go for an IPA (India Pale Ale) or a strong fruity rosé

Spag bol
A bit of a messy TV snack from Observer restaurant critic Jay Rayner but who wouldn’t be tempted by Angela Hartnett’s 3-4 hour ragu which deserves a good bottle. Like a Chianti Classico riserva. See my 6 best pairings for spaghetti bolognese.

Fish fingers
(Or equally, fish and chips.) Mentioned by novelist Julie Myerson who also admits to enjoying a glass of Sauvignon Blanc. They’d rub along fine together but I must confess to a secret vice which is that I love fish fingers and champagne. Cava at a pinch.

Tapas
Newsreader Mark Austin says he likes tapas and a glass of wine (unspecified though I suspect it might be a Rioja). He should try a well-chilled glass of fino or manzanilla sherry. See also my 6 best Spanish wines to try with tapas.

Cheese on toast
We also don’t know what wine his colleague Julie Etchingham drinks with her cheese on toast made with “strong cheddar, always with Worcestershire sauce” Could quaff a Cabernet but I’d personally be reaching for a bottle of Timothy Taylor Landlord.

Home-made burgers
The fondly remembered childhood treat of X Factor presenter Dermot O’Leary. Adults should try them with a good bottle of Bordeaux: as fine a match with a burger as a steak - provided you don’t overdo the relish.

Chips
Perfect TV food, according to the BBC’s Alan Yentob - and he should know. Personally I think this is beer food again. Or a mug of builder’s tea, which would certainly be a good match for his other favoured snack, fried-egg sandwiches . . .

Fish pie
Mentioned by Property Ladder’s Sarah Beeny. Her version, which includes smoked haddock and a cheesy sauce, is quite rich which would make me reach for a fairly full-bodied (but not ridiculously oaky) Chardonnay. See also my 4 top drink pairings for fish pie.

Image credit: Andres Ayrton

Matching Lebanese food and wine

Many of us are familiar with Lebanon’s rich culinary heritage, courtesy of the Lebanese diaspora and food writers such as Claudia Roden and Anissa Helou. Yet the prevalence of popular Lebanese dishes such as tabbouleh and hummous in our supermarkets is not yet matched by Lebanese wines despite a long history of grape cultivation dating back to the Phoenicians.

The answer to this curious paradox lies perhaps in the small volume of wine produced in this tiny country of 4000 square miles as well its recent turbulent history which has often disrupted wine production and export.

The country’s top producers are out to remedy this lack of awareness, a recent example being a lunch I attended just before Christmas at the Lebanese restaurant Fakhreldine, pairing typical Lebanese dishes with wines from one of Lebanon’s oldest producers Château Ksara.

The typical Lebanese meal starts with a selection of hot and cold mezze (see photo above) which can encompass many different flavours. With them we were offered a selection of Ksara’s wines - their Blanc de Blancs 2006, Sunset Rose 2007 and red Réserve du Couvent 2006. I thought the rosé would match the mezze best, but was surprised to find that wasn’t the case. The panoply of flavours in the mezze - most notably garlic, sumac and citrus - interfered with the rose’s fruitiness leaving it rather overwhelmed.

The mezze included a luscious, smooth hoummos, smoky baba ghanoush, tabbouleh with lots of parsley (as it should be), crisp falafel, and stuffed vine leaves. warak inab. More unusual offerings were kibbe mekliyeh, a pumpkin and spinach pastry and spinach and sumac fatayer. Overall my favourite wine to pair these mezze was the fresh, fruity Ksara Blanc de Blancs 2006, a subtly oaked blend of Sauvignon, Semillon, and Chardonnay.

The one dish I felt paired better with a red was Fakhreldine’s spiced lamb flatbreads - redolent of cinnamon and allspice - which matched Ksara’s red Reserve du Couvent, a belnd of Syrah, Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon. We also found reds more to our taste with the main courses, a slightly disappointing dish of five-spice lamb and bukhari rice, and an exceptional mixed meat grill - skewers of lamb, infused with smoky charcoal aromas, which worked a treat with the Ksara Souverain 2004 - a wine made from a 50%/50% blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Arinarnoa - a rare crossing of Merlot and Petit Verdot. It proved a voluptuous, richly aromatic match for the lamb. This was followed by skewers of succulent lamb known as lahim meshoue, and lamb cutlets which were accompanied by Ksara’s longest-aged reds Château 2002 and Château 1999, a Bordeaux-style blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit Verdot which had been aged in French oak for 18 months. Both were finely nuanced wines, with good length and complexity though I thought the 2002 was marginally better with the lamb.

The surprise hit of the tasting foodwise? Shish taouk skewers, or chicken marinaded in chilli, garlic and lemon ‘ then flash grilled (a recipe I’ll be giving you my version of for my Lebanese feast tomorrow) The simplicity of this dish belies its excellence: tender, succulent pieces of chicken served with toum, a wicked garlic dip which left me reeling for a few hours - and I love garlic. This dish was tricky to match, with its intensely garlicky character. It would almost have been worth going back to the Sauvignon-based Blanc de Blancs.

The meal finished on a light note with fresh fruit, sorbet, and Lebanese cheese. In place of the usual sweet pastries, we drank a Ksara Vin D’Or from 1935, still vibrantly honeyed - quite extraordinary for its age.

As a footnote I’d be curious to discover more about alternatives to wine with Lebanese food. Claudia Roden writes about ‘white’ coffee, a typical Lebanese after-dinner drink consisting of hot water and orange blossom essence, and I feel there is great potential for non-alcoholic syrups, fruit juices and teas which I think would work well with these richly aromatic dishes.

Fakhreldine
85 Piccadilly
W1J 7NB
Tel: 020 7493 3424
www.fakhreldine.co.uk

Château Ksara
www.ksara.com.lb

Stockists in UK:
everywine.co.uk
wineman.co.uk

Image credit: Jeff Velis from Pixabay