Match of the week | Salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn with a mature South African syrah blend

Match of the week

Salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn with a mature South African syrah blend

Showing off a mature bottle of red is usually a question of keeping it simple but it adds an extra dimension if you can serve the perfect cut.

I’ve written before about Pete Hannan’s salt-aged Glenarm Shorthorn beef (in fact a couple of you have been lucky enough to win one of his fabulous meat hampers). It has an incredible savoury depth of flavour plus a slight salinity from the salt ageing that shows off a good red to perfection.

I had a 2012 vintage of La Motte’s Hanneli R*, a blend of syrah (from two different sites in Elim and Franschhoek), grenache and petit sirah which I’d been meaning to try for a while and it really was the perfect moment to enjoy it. Every element was beautifully balanced and integrated which was impressive given it had been aged in oak for 40 months* (So impressed was I by the pairing that I tried it again to equal effect with Samantha O'Keefe of Lismore's 2016 syrah on New Year's Eve. You may have read that her home and vineyards were devastated by fire just before Christmas. All the more reason to support her in any way you can by buying and drinking her wine)

Too often I think we drink new world wines, especially the more expensive ones, way too young. We really should tuck them away and hang on to them.

See also The best wine pairing for steak

* The current vintage - although it appears that it's only available in South Africa - is the 2013 but you could obviously drink a mature Rhône red to equal effect.

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