What wine to drink with ratatouille?

Unless you’ve been walking round the underground with your eyes closed you can’t fail to have noticed the posters for the newly released (in the UK at least) Ratatouille - an animated film about a gastronomic rat. For entirely understandable reasons I couldn’t persuade my husband or any of my grown-up children to come with me to see it but it seems to have captured the imagination of the critics as well as the public - including in France where it's been a smash hit.

So what do you drink with a rat-at-too-ee which, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a Provencal vegetable stew of courgettes/zucchini, peppers and aubergine/eggplant. You’re most likely to be having some kind of meat with it too - probably something like some grilled lamb with rosemary, oregano, thyme and garlic.

Although Chateau Latour features in the film - and would probably go with the dish - it might be just a tad out-of- reach for everyday drinking so I suggest a robust southern French red such as a Ctes-du-Roussillon, a Costires-de-Nmes or a Faugres from the Languedoc. An inexpensive Syrah from France or Argentina would work pretty well too or even a strong dry ros like a Bandol.

* According to Wikipedia, there were plans for Disney and Pixar to launch a French-produced wine into Costco under the Ratatouille label to coincide with the film’s release but they had to abandon the project when the California Wine Institute drew attention to regulations that restrict the use of cartoon characters on labels (to avoid attracting under-age drinkers)! Interestingly their choice of wine was a Burgundian Chardonnay - not the cleverest pairing!

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