Laurent Chaniac: the master of pairing wine and spice

I was hugely saddened this week to learn of the passing of sommelier Laurent Chaniac who worked for many years at one of London’s leading restaurants, The Cinnamon Club.

Unusually for a Frenchman - if I may say so - he embraced the idea of wine and spice with enthusiasm and always came up with imaginative and original pairings for chef Vivek Singh’s food.

They made a great team - both of them pioneers In their own right. Laurent for his wine pairing skills, Vivek for being one of the first chefs to put Indian fine dining on the map.

Vivek wrote a touching tribute to Laurent on his instagram account which he’s given me permission to reproduce below.

If you’d like to appreciate just how ahead of the game Laurent was read this piece on wine and spice which I wrote for Decanter some 18 years ago, I think.

So long my dearest friend Laurent. You have been such a good friend and companion on this journey of food and wine for the last 24 years that I feel lost without you.

It’s taken me some time to collect my thoughts and realise that you have indeed left us. Gone too soon but not without a fight, not without a challenge, not without making a significant change. You, my friend, have given so much pleasure to so many.

In my 30 plus years of cheffing, I have seen so many that love great food, many that love spice, many that love good taste and so many that claim to know and love win but hand on heart I know NO one else that loved spice and wine together as much as you did Laurent! You showed the world that wine with Indian food was not just a passing fad but a legitimate and serious endeavour.

Your ability to imagine flavours and combine them with notes in wine showed me (and many others) that with due care, it’s possible to pair any dish with a good wine. There is a wine for every dish and a dish for every wine if you care to look for it. You were a magician my friend. This was your gift

Your love for hospitality, for wine, for producers, for teams and everything around it has taught me and my team so much. I will miss our sessions, our wine pairing dinners and our discussions. I promise to keep the essence of your spirit for wine and excellence alive for as long as I am. At Cinnamon Collection https://www.thecinnamoncollection.com/ I promise we will continue your legacy of good taste, great wine and the best teams. You have been - and will always be - our OG Wine Guru.

I last saw Laurent at a tasting a couple of years ago when with his customary charm and kindness he pointed out the wines in the room that had impressed him most. Typical of the man

He will be much missed.

Top picture of Laurent Chaniac (L) and Vivek Singh (R)

Fine Wine and Fast Food

The news that Greggs, the mass market bakery was opening a champagne bar in Fenwick in Newcastle created a predictable storm of publicity this week (good on them!) but the idea of matching fine wine with fast food is nothing new. 

Here’s a feature I wrote for Decanter magazine 17 years ago which admittedly didn’t include sausage rolls or steak bakes but easily could have done. Back in 2014, after a trip to Edinburgh, I suggested champagne too!

Anyway enjoy it and regard it as licence to crack open a serious bottle with your favourite takeaway. ‘High-low’ as it’s called nowadays is definitely a trend. Here’s the article as it appeared back in 2007

Fine wine and fast food

One of the most enjoyable food and wine matches I’ve experienced was also the most serendipitous. The family were away, I was working on a book and staggered down half way through the evening to find the fridge virtually bare except for a half bottle of Krug, a half-empty packet of the kids’ fish fingers and some frozen spinach. Ten minutes later, the spinach well anointed with butter, the fish fingers grilled and the Krug poured I had the perfect supper.

Since then various wine lovers have confessed to me their secret pleasures: bacon and eggs or hamburgers with cru class Bordeaux, kebabs with Cote Rotie, champagne with popcorn and it’s made me question why we generally save our best wines for special occasions.

Why pour them for friends who may not appreciate them when you could be tucked up on the sofa with a takeaway and a good DVD and have them all to yourself?

Why create unnecessary competition for your best wines in the form of redundant foams and sticky jus? Let the wine be the hero.

In the interests of encouraging you to hang loose with your cellar I conducted a few experiments courtesy of Decanter’s wine cupboard and a selection of local takeaways.

Needless to say I’m not encouraging you to head for your local McDonald’s - fast food needn’t be foul food - but if even Robert Parker takes his favourite bottles along to his local Chinese as he once told me when I interviewed him - why shouldn’t you?

Armando Ascorve Morales at unsplash.com

Burgers and Bordeaux ****
Why it worked
First stop the local gourmet burger outfit, Gourmet Burger Kitchen and a pukka bottle of Pauillac (Chateau Pontet-Canet 2001). I order their classic, served with salad and relish and a bowl of chunky fries. Apart from struggling to get it into my mouth without covering myself with creamy goo it’s hard to fault the classic meat and potatoes match. Red wine, grilled rare beef, salty potatoes - what’s not to like? The Pontet-Canet even stood up to the raw onion and relish though the match would probably have been marginally better without it and brought some refreshing acidity to the partnership which counteracted the carb overload
What to hold/go easy on
The raw onions and relish. And skip the ketchup
What else to try: A top-notch Californian cab, a Super-Chilean

See some other posh (and not-so-posh) pairings for a burger

Champagne and Sushi *****
Why it worked
The sugar in the sushi rice keyed in perfectly with the dosage in the extravagant Jacquart Katarina we paired with it, the bubbles counteracting the oiliness of the raw salmon. The match also held up when I dunked my sushi in soy (umami at work) and, surprisingly, even when I added a modest amount of wasabi and nibbled some pickled ginger. The seaweed in the maki sushi also tied in well. Is there a nicer way to eat sushi?
What to hold/go easy on
Don’t overdo the wasabi
What else to try: Muscadet

See other good wine matches for sushi

Fish, chips and white Graves ****
Why it worked
I was surprised, I confess, how successful this match with a 2004 Clos Floridene blanc from Denis Dubourdieu was. I would have thought pure unoaked sauvignon would have been better (on a similar basis to adding a squeeze of lemon) but this seductively lush white added a fabulous note of luxury to what were admittedly not the crispest most sizzlingly fresh fish and chips I’ve ever eaten. A bit like partnering them with some really good home-made mayonnaise. White graves is an underrated wine
What to hold/go easy on:
Added lemon juice. Brown sauce. Ketchup
What else to try: Sancerre, Pouilly Fume and other top sauvignon blancs. Champagne - though the Katarina was a bit sweet. Champagne almost always goes well with crispy, deep-fried seafood including fish fingers (see above).

See other great matches for fish and chips

Rotisserie chicken and Chardonnay *****

Why it worked
No news to Decanter readers, I’m sure, but just to draw attention to the fact that even a humble rotisserie chicken can be turned into a feast by partnering it with a top class chardonnay like the big lush creamy Voyager Estate 2002 I tried. Don’t even think of removing the skin. That’s what makes the match.
What to hold/go easy on:
Accompanying veg and salad particularly if dressed with a vinaigrette. Just a few roast or fried potatoes will do.
What else to try: White hermitage. Good pinot noir

See other good matches for roast chicken

Crispy duck and Pinot Noir *****
Why it worked
Another timeless classic but how often do you order crispy duck on its own? Or drink it with a wine as good as the silkily sweet 2003 Au Bon Climat Pinot Noir? A crispy duck and pinot noir party. What a great way to entertain!
What to hold/go easy on
Don’t overdo the hoisin sauce. Or order everything else on the menu to eat with it especially dishes with black bean sauce
What else to try: Cheaper pinots from Chile. A fruity Italian red like a Dolcetto. Mid-weight merlots should work too.

See other pairings for duck, crispy or otherwise

Pizza and Chianti ***
Why it worked
I’ve had better matches for Chianti Classico admittedly but a bottle of Villa Caffagio 2004 doesn’t half improve a supermarket pizza. The acidity in chianti is always great for tackling cooked cheese. Even at its superior best it has a quaffable quality that makes it a relaxing sip.
What to hold/go easy on:
Too many topping ingredients (very un-Italian). Avoid curried meat pizzas - as I hope you do anyway
What else to try: Most other Tuscan reds, new world sangioveses, Languedoc reds like Faugères

See other wine - and beer - pairings for pizza

Curry and Rioja Reserva **
Why it (just) works
I’ve partnered rioja successfully with curry before, most notably rogan josh and the smooth plummy Ondarre Rioja Reserva 2001 just about held its own with a moderately spicy selection of South Indian dishes including a prawn curry, a chicken Chettinad and a potato curry. The key to making it kick in was taking a spoonful of raita with each mouthful which calmed the heat and upped the acidity of the match.
What to hold/go easy on:
The overall heat level. Really hot curries do wine of any kind few favours
What else to try: To be honest a substantial new world red would have been better: with a few years bottle age to tame the tannins. Maybe a Grange 1990? (Only joking)

My top 5 wine picks with curry

Top photo by Meelan Bawjee at Unsplash.com 

 

Why I’ve put part of matchingfoodandwine.com behind a paywall

Those of you who consult matchingfoodandwine.com regularly may have noticed I have put the Top Pairings section of the site behind a paywall.

You may wonder why after all this time. After all the site has been free to use since I first set it up back in 2006.

At that time it wasn’t common to charge for online content - Jancis Robinson was one of the only writers who did - and then, working for the Guardian, I felt it was all part of the service.

But in many ways it’s been a victim of its own success. Loads of people were using it and not paying for it - something I didn’t mind in the case of private individuals but found slightly galling in the case of large companies. But hell, why wouldn’t they? I wasn’t asking them for money despite offering them over 18 years of expertise!

So, having left the Guardian in the summer, I finally decided to put the key Top Pairings section behind a paywall which you can access by buying a bundle of credits, a model those of you who subscribe to photographic libraries will be familiar with. Or think a ‘carnet’ of Paris metro tickets if you aren’t.

You can either buy them as a monthly or annual subscription where they get automatically topped up or a on one-off basis. 

One credit buys you access to one article so it’s basically pay-as-you-go. You can get an idea of what the article is about from the first couple of paragraphs.

Once you’ve paid for an article you have permanent access to it and there’s no time limit by which the credits have to be used.

Many sections of the site still remain free - the regularly updated Match of the Week slot and Recipes, Entertaining, Wine Basics and Food & Wine Pros among them so there’s plenty to browse.

But if you’d like to access the key recommendations here’s how to go about it;

How to buy a bundle of credits

It’s actually really simple.

Head for the Purchase Credits page and sign up or sign in, choose from the credit packs and you’ll then be able enter your payment details.

(Prices start at £6 ($7.82/7.20€*) for a one-off bundle of 10 credits i.e. 60p (78 cents /.72€*) an article or you could take out an annual membership for £55 (/$71.76/66€*) which would give you 120 credits which works out at only 46p (60 cents/.55€) an article. There is a range of other options.

If you’re a business and would like to set up access for more than one member of your team you can take out a corporate subscription. Only one person needs to sign up but you can then add the email addresses of up to four other colleagues to give them access to the content. If they sign in with that email and hit “forgotten password” they can set up their own password.

Here’s the link you need again

* at the current rate of exchange 20/10/24

When to pair red wine with fish

Few people now throw up their hands in horror at the idea of matching red wine with fish. But how many realise just how often you can pair the two?

Here are six occasions when I think you can:

When the fish is ‘meaty’
If that doesn’t sound a contradiction in terms! Tuna is an obvious example but swordfish, monkfish and, occasionally, salmon fall into that category. That doesn’t mean they should only be drunk with a red (think of salade Niçoise, for example, which is more enjoyable with a rosé) simply that reds - usually light ones like Pinot Noir and Loire Cabernet Franc - generally work.

When it’s seared, grilled or barbecued
Just like any other food, searing, grilling or barbecuing fish creates an intensity of flavour that cries out for a red, especially if the fish is prepared with a spicy marinade or baste. Even oily fish like mackerel and sardines can work with a light, chilled red if they’re treated this way.

When it’s roasted
Similar thinking. The classic example is roast monkfish, especially if wrapped in pancetta and served with a red wine sauce (see below) when it differs very little from a meat roast. You could even drink red with a whole roast turbot or brill (though I generally prefer white). Accompaniments such as lentils or mushrooms will enhance a red wine match.

When it’s served with meat
Surf’n’turf! Once meat is involved one inclines towards a red, certainly if that meat is steak. Spanish-style dishes that combine chorizo and fish like hake are a natural for reds (like crianza Riojas) too.

When it’s served in a Mediterranean-style fish soup or stew
A recent discovery - that a classic French Provençal soup with its punchy accompaniment of rouille (a mayonnaise-type sauce made with garlic, chilli and saffron) is great with a gutsy red (I tried it with a minor Madiran but any traditional southern or south-western red that wasn’t too fruit driven would work). It’s the slightly bitter saffron note that these soups and stews like bouillabaisse contain that seems to be the key. A sauce that had similar ingredients would work too as would this dish of braised squid above.

When it’s served with a red wine sauce
You might not think that you could serve a really powerful red wine sauce with fish but with a full-flavoured fish such as halibut or turbot it works. And the natural pairing is a substantial, but not overwhelmingly alcoholic or tannic red. Like a fleshy Merlot.

Photo © Belokoni Dmitri at shutterstock.com