A menu for Riesling

Earlier this week I was involved in judging a selection of South African rieslings at High Timber in London and afterwards we had a three course lunch that had been designed to match with them. This is what we ate and drank.

First the wines which were all tasted blind. There were just 16 of them, the purpose of the exercise being to assess where South Africa currently stands in comparison to its international competitors. Most were dry and a few sweet: pretty well all were appealing while, in the case of the drier wines, not yet having the complexity of more established Riesling producing countries and regions.

The winners were the crisp citrussy De Wetshof Rhine Riesling 2009 and Paul Cluver Noble Late Harvest Weisser Riesling 2009 though we also particularly liked the late harvest Rieslings from Jordan (the Mellifera 2008) and Klein Constantia.

The first course was described as Nepalese Chicken and was a dry tikka-like dish served with a mint raita. It paired really well with the crisp young De Wetshof Riesling and also with Paul Cluver’s Close Encounter, a light 8% Riesling that had totally perplexed us having 39g of sugar but still tasting bone dry.

The next course was Coconut Poached Monkfish with Thai-spiced broth and steamed Pak Choi, a toned-down version of a Thai green curry (more creamy and coconutty, less hot). That worked particularly well with a limey 2008 Thelema Riesling which had been one of my own favourites in the line-up, and with the Klein Constantia and Jordan dry Rieslings.

Finally there was a dessert of mango with vanilla rice pudding with caramelised pistachios which I’d recommend to anyone seeking to show off a sweet Riesling: warm (rather than hot) rice pudding with fresh (Alfonso, I would guess) mango purée. The nuts would have been better uncaramelised, I think, just there to add a bit of texture. That was a great pairing with the Paul Cluver Late Harvest Riesling and with the 2008 Jordan Mellifera (but not with the 2006 which had evolved more marmaladey, Tokajish notes)

Clever pairings for rare sherries

I don’t think I ever go to a sherry tasting without coming away renewed in my conviction about what a marvellous match it is for food and the one I attended yesterday was no exception. It was organised by the enterprising Les Caves de Pyrne who are importing for the first time into the UK some rare sherries from Emilio Hidalgo and took place at Dehesa, the sister (if that’s the appropriate word) restaurant of the better known Salt Yard.

The sherries themselves were spectacular but what was impressive was how well they were matched with the food - no mean feat with wines of this character and complexity

Especial Fino, La Panesa with smoked Lincolnshire eel with hispi cabbage and dehydrated olives
The component sherries in this untypical fino are an average age of 15 years which accounts for its rich golden and intense flavour of roasted almonds. The combination with the eel seemed quite Japanese in character - it added a nutty top note that provided a brilliant contrast to the slightly oily, soft, smoky fish (the cabbage and olives didn’t really affect the pairing, I found).

Oloroso Seco, Gobernador with roasted Jerusalem artichoke, pied de mouton and Morcilla
A true dry oloroso with a powerful flavour of grilled hazelnuts which stood up well to the earthy flavours of the artichoke and morcilla, two difficult ingredients to pair with wine. A very autumnal combination as Le Cave’s Doug Wregg aptly observed.

Marques de Rodil Palo Cortado with pan-fried barbary duck with blood orange and parsnip purée
The stand-out pairing for me for its sheer unexpectedness. The palo cortado which was aged for half its 20 year life under flor was paler than the oloroso, but deliciously fragrant and nutty almost turning into caramel with the sweet orange sauce (made with blood orange juice and chicken stock) and creamy parsnip pure. A really inspired combination

El Tresillo 1874 Especial Amontillado Viejo with Parmesan, Comté and Mahon with caramelised walnuts and rye bread
Possibly the best sherry I’ve ever tasted - certainly the best amontillado. I can’t really improve on the tasting note: “Imagine notes of cooked walnuts, orange peel, dried figs, toffee, cream, warm wood and spices (cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg and cloves among others” (although possibly hazelnuts rather than walnuts) Almost too good to drink with the cheese - you really didn’t want anything to distract from the amazing flavours but it did obviously work, especially with the Parmesan and Mahon. Shame it retails at around £60-70 but a perfect present for an ardent sherry lover.

Pedro Ximenez, with bitter chocolate sorbet, muscavado ice-cream and moscatel raisins macerated in PX brandy
Again a lovely and quite distinctive sherry without the excessive sweetness of many PXs: pure liquid raisin. Possibly the raisins in the dish were therefore superfluous though there was a touch of lemon zest which accentuated the flavour of the sherry nicely. (I also found the combination of black coffee, chocolate sorbet and PX pretty sensational when I sipped my espresso afterwards)

These sherries are only available in limited supply. Only 5000 bottles are made of the fino, for example - and most will go into restaurants like Dehesa and Salt Yard. But if you’re a sherry fanatic you really must try and taste them.

You may also enjoy: 

• The best pairings for amontillado and palo cortado sherry
• The best pairings for sweet oloroso and PX sherry
• The best pairings for fino and manzanilla sherry
• The best pairings for dry oloroso sherry

I attended the tasting and lunch as a guest of Les Caves de Pyrène.

Image by Volker Schoen from Pixabay

Organising a wine and seafood pairing dinner

Last night we had a fun five course wine and food matching dinner at Rockfish Grill in Bristol which showed the range of wines you can match with fish. Here’s a few thoughts about how we approached it for those of you who are organising a similar event.

* The kitchen’s priorities are different from those of whoever is chosing wine. The chef wants to create a menu that shows off their signature dishes and make sure his or her team can deliver it. The wine person wants to make sure each course will work with wine. So it’s a compromise. We dropped two dishes - anchoïade on toast and ‘Bismarck’ herring with onion and dill which would have been tough on wine.

* We gave a choice of two wines for most of the courses to provide two contrasting options and allow some feedback from the guests.

* We introduced the guests to some wines they were unlikely to know such as Picpoul de Pinet. That’s the great advantage of a wine dinner - you can experiment in a way you might hesitate to do if you were ordering wine in a restaurant.

* We created two controversial (to some) pairings in the form of red wine with fish and sweet wine with cheese - both well received.

* Most of the discussion about the wines took place at the beginning of the evening. It’s important when people are going out for what can be quite an expensive evening with friends that you leave them time to talk and enjoy the wine and food. You can always go round the tables and discuss the pairings with them individually.

This is the menu that chef Mitch Tonks of Rockfish Grill chose and my pairings:

Razor clams grilled over the fire
Dartmouth crab with salad and mayonnaise
Goujons of lemon sole with tartare sauce
This choice of 3 starters was served with a Picpoul de Pinet 2008 from the Vignerons de Florensac, a simple, very crisp, Muscadet-like white and a contrasting much more complex aged Sauvignon St-Bris vieilles vignes 2006 from Clothilde Davenne. (St-Bris is just next door to the Chablis region) The general feeling was the Picpoul worked best with the goujons and crab, especially the white meat and the Sauvignon with the more robust cooked clams.

Scallops roasted in the shell with white port and garlic
We went for two totally contrasting wines with this course, Mitch’s own Tonnix, a crisp zesty Portuguese white from Quinta de la Rosa and a much richer white burgundy St-Véran Domaine des Deux Roches Burgundy 2007. The St-Véran, the more classic match, overwhelmingly proved the favourite choice but I really liked the fresh, palate-cleansing effect of the Tonnix too.

Cuttlefish braised in Chianti with borlotti beans
This robust seafood stew was a natural for red wine with the typically Italian 2005 Trescone, Lamborghini a blend of Sangiovese, Ciliegiolo and Merlot. providing a refreshing counterpoint to the red wine sauce and mealy beans. Better than any of the whites I thought.

Grilled Monkfish with fennel
A dish that worked with three of the wines: the Trescone because monkfish is a meaty fish and grilling or roasting fish makes it more likely to go with a red (a lot of guests enjoyed this); with the Tonnix (a crisp, citrussy counterpoint but with enough personality to stand up to the grilling) and the St-Véran (white burgundy is great with rich fish and especially with fennel and cream which is almost always a good match with Chardonnay)

Gorgonzola with honey
Most agreed that the sweet wine we served - Domaine la Hilaire Jardin D’Hiver from the Gers in south-west France, a blend Petit & Gros Manseng - worked much better than the Trescone with the cheese - a first experience of the combination for a number of the guests.

Mitch also served a rhubarb and campari trifle which obviously contained its own booze so we didn’t attempt to pair wine with that!

So, a good way to spend an evening with great food and wine and the opportunity to pick up a few tips along the way. Wine dinners can be a lot of fun.

If you’d like me to help your organise or speak at a wine dinner contact me on the enquiry form at the bottom of the page.

You might also like: 

• Top wine pairings with scallops
• The best wine pairings with crab
• The best pairings for prawns or shrimp

Photo by Alex Favali

What's the best way to introduce food and wine pairing into your restaurant?

More and more restaurants are introducing an element of food and wine pairing into their menus. It may be simply a question of suggesting a wine that is available by the glass to go with a dish or a more ambitious food pairing experience - the key thing is that both the front of house and the kitchen can pull it off.

The other night I went to a tapas bar which had introduced two menus paired with wines. They’d really got behind the idea, found a sponsor for the promotion and the manager was enthusiastic about the concept but it didn’t quite work and this I think is why:

* The formula is not ideally suited to tapas which is a casual, pic’n’mix way of eating. It’s based on a selection of dishes rather than a succession of courses which can be carefully matched to a wine.

* The wine wasn’t sufficiently interesting to carry the pairings (or encourage the customer to trade up - the point of the whole exercise for the restaurant, presumably). Being tied to a single supplier also limited the pairings that could be offered.

* The kitchen didn’t have the skill to pull off the complex dishes they were creating. (Or the time, with a busy restaurant, come to that.) To be fair that’s actually very hard to achieve. I’ve only ever come across one restaurant that could create perfect dishes to match specific wines on demand and that was run by France's top sommelier

So how might they have done it? Well, presumably from their point of view the object was to create a point of difference from other neighbouring restaurants, and give their customers confidence to experiment. All customers also like deals so here’s what they could have done.

* Offer a deal of the week - one glass of wine with three complementary (not complimentary!) tapas

* Offer a carefully chosen selection of tapas with a matching bottle of wine - for example a seafood selection with a Rueda or an Albarino. Or, for a bigger party, a ‘surf’n’turf experience: a bottle of white with seafood tapas, a red with meat-based ones.

* Gradually wean the customer onto the idea of food and wine matching by offering one or two sweet tapas or a cheese course with a matching glass of wine - encouraging them to order an extra course.

In other types of restaurant where dishes are served individually there’s no reason why you shouldn’t offer a specific wine - or beer - suggestion with each dish, depending on how many items you have on the menu. (A long menu means having a lot of bottles open which makes it harder to keep them in good condition. You could get round this by limiting the pairings to a number of daily ‘specials’

What the restaurant I visited did right was to offer great value for money (£20 for four samples of wine and matching tapas, £30 for 8 wines and tapas tasters) and sell the idea enthusiastically to the customer. Food and wine matching can be a great marketing tool.

Risking a spam attack do you have a view on the best way to sell food and wine pairing. Restaurateurs, what’s worked for you?

Image credit: Timur Saglambilek