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

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.

The day I cooked with Léoville las Cases

“Isn’t it time you wrote a piece on cooking with wine again?” mused my editor over lunch. “How about cooking with a bottle of first growth Bordeaux?” I gulped. “Er, I don’t think most of our readers would do that.” “Well, we should try it out for them.” he said firmly.

OK, there’s a case. Imagine the scene - there’s two of you. Great bottle. Great steak. Why open another lesser bottle to make the steak sauce if the bottle you’ve got is going to make the best sauce you’ve ever tasted? Besides, as I had rashly admitted to Guy, I had successfully used a glass of top quality white burgundy in a upmarket version of chicken with white wine sauce and mushrooms which had so impressed my guests they’d talked about it for weeks afterwards. So, yes, why not?

I mentioned the experiment to some chef pals who were all uniformly sniffy about it but then chefs are notoriously mean. They also - as chefs do - all disagreed with how the experiment should be conducted. Whether the wine should be added at the beginning or at the end after stock. Reduced once or three times. Reduced to a third of its volume or practically nothing.

When I spoke to Guy a couple of days later, he was still up for it but conceded that we should settle for the slightly more modest Léoville Las Cases, a second growth, true, but still hardly the kind of wine you’d use for cooking unless you were Bill Gates. I decided to make a simple entrecote marchand du vin, a dish I’d normally run up with a day-old half bottle of whatever I’d been drinking the night before - something like a Cotes du Rhone Villages or a Faugeres. It was more likely that the character of the wine would show through if it was cooked relatively quickly than if it was incorporated in a long, slow braise where all the flavours melded together - although you would always add a dash of fresh wine at the end.

I cooked the steak and set it aside to rest. I sweated off a couple of shallots. poured in the equivalent of a small glass of wine and reduced it by roughly two thirds. I whisked in a bit of soft butter, seasoned it with salt and pepper and poured the steak juices back into the pan. And tasted it . . .

It was not only not the best sauce I’ve ever made but one of the worst. The reduction process completely de-natured the wine, accentuating the tannins and completely stripping the fruit.

Chefs would of course have gaily poured in a ladleful of demi-glace. I tried again using beef stock to deglaze the pan. It was better - a richer, fuller, more balanced sauce but the tannins were still obtrusive and the character of the wine was masked by the stock.

Would it be any better with a cheaper bordeaux, I wondered? I picked up an inexpensive bottle of 2005 Calvet, a vintage I thought should be able to stand up to robust treatment. I repeated the experiment, without the stock this time. It was painfully thin and acidic.

Well maybe a Chilean merlot then? Actually that was rather better. The resulting sauce had a nice degree of roundness and sweetness - but it wouldn’t be a great match for a top wine.

What if I reduced the wine very slowly rather than bubbling it fiercely? Back to the Léoville Las Cases. This time I left it barely simmering for half an hour in the pan. Some improvement but the end result was still a touch bitter. The wine was just too much of a heavyweight.

The inescapable conclusion, and it’s always a bit of a letdown to have to confirm conventional wisdom, was that this was in every way the wrong kind of wine. Not just because it was extravagant (I wouldn’t have minded that if the result had been spectacular) but that it was totally unsuited to being heated and reduced. Too young, too tannic, too concentrated. Not that it would have been any better a few years down the line. The kind of wine you need for a red wine sauce is robust, generous and fruity - unoaked or, if oaked, unobtrusively oaked. The southern French grapes - especially Grenache and Syrah - are much better suited to the task.

Conclusion number two. If you are going to use better than basic cooking wine it’s better not to reduce it too ferociously and to give it a bit longer to mellow than you would if you were using a cheaper wine. A proportion of stock certainly creates a better balance in the sauce although you lose some of the strong winey flavour. You can also adopt an old chef’s trick and add a spoonful of redcurrant jelly or a squirt of tomato ketchup to boost the sweetness. Or a little bit of cornflour to thicken it rather than over-reduce it.

Third conclusion: Good white wines work better than top red ones. Yes, there’s a danger of accentuating their acidity but that’s easier to deal with than rampant tannins. Gewurztraminer responds particularly well to being used in cooking.

Finally, even if the Léoville las Cases saucehad been transcendent I doubt it would have done the wine any favours. I tried both it and the Calvet with the sauce I’d made with the Las Cases and it really came into its own despite the inadequacies of the sauce. You don’t want your sauce to outshine your wine (take note chefs who deliver plates to the table with ridiculously sticky reductions.)

If you're interested in learning more about cooking with wine two Michelin-starred chef Raymond Blanc runs occasional courses on Food and Wine, including cooking with wine, at his restaurant Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons.

Chefs on cooking with wine:

“I’d challenge anyoneto know which variety of wine you’ve used after you’ve cooked a dish for 3 hours”
Alex Mackay, Guild of Food Writers Cookery Writer of the Year

“Like any other ingredient the quality of the wine you use is important but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. We get great results with rioja and some of the cheaper Rhone reds”
David Everitt-Mathias, Le Champignon Sauvage, Cheltenham

“ You should match the style of wine to the dish. If you’re cooking a recipe from the suth west of France, for example, you need something powerful, red and dark. But you wouldn’t use that for a coq au vin.” Henry Harris, Racine.

“To spend more than £4 on a bottle of wine for cooking is stupid - a complete waste of money” Raymond Blanc - Le Manoir aux Quat’ Saisons.

This article first appeared in the February 2007 issue of Decanter.

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