Pairings | Tartare

The best wine pairings with venison

The best wine pairings with venison

What is the best wine pairing for venison? An easy answer is the same sort of wine you’d drink with beef, but I’d suggest a few modifications as the two are not quite the same. Three qualities of venison, or cervena as it's sometimes referred to in New Zealand, particularly distinguish it from beef and should influence your choice of wine match: 

The best wine pairings for steak tartare

The best wine pairings for steak tartare

Should you drink the same sort of full-bodied red wine with steak tartare - raw chopped beef - as you would with a grilled steak?

Which food to pair with South African chenin blanc

Which food to pair with South African chenin blanc

You might think it odd to pick out South African Chenin rather than Chenin Blanc in general but I do think the wines are distinctive, particularly when it comes to the crisper styles which are much zestier than they tend to be in the Loire

Top pairings for dry and off-dry Alsace whites

Top pairings for dry and off-dry Alsace whites

On a recent visit to Alsace, I had the pleasure of rediscovering the region’s diverse wine offerings, from crisp Rieslings to  Gewürztraminer and Pinot Gris. What struck me during this trip was how integral sweetness is to perfecting a food and wine pairing—a nuance that can vary greatly between a youthful bottle and a more aged vintage.

The best food pairings for Barolo and Barbaresco

The best food pairings for Barolo and Barbaresco

The food of Piedmont in north-west Italy is as highly regarded as its wines so it makes sense to make the local dishes your first choice if you’re looking for a match for a bottle of Barolo or Barbaresco.

 Some great food pairings for tequila

Some great food pairings for tequila

Despite the recent increase in interest in Mexican street food like tacos consumers in the UK still have to take to tequila (maybe because they’re too busy drinking gin) but in fact it’s an attractive and versatile spirit to pair with food

Venison tartare with Mountford's The Rise 2009 pinot noir

Venison tartare with Mountford's The Rise 2009 pinot noir

As you can imagine I’ve been drinking a fair amount of pinot noir in New Zealand this week (it’s a hard life). In general Kiwis pair it with lamb for obvious reasons but the most striking match I came across was with a venison tartare at the North Canterbury forage, a fabulous event I’ll be writing more about in due course

Steak tartare and Provence rosé

Steak tartare and Provence rosé

It’s back to the usual drizzly grey grot this Monday morning but the past week has been glorious.

Steak tartare and Beaujolais

Steak tartare and Beaujolais

This was a wine pairing I hadn’t thought of putting together before but once experienced last week at Racine it seemed supremely logical.

Steak tartare and Côteaux du Languedoc

Steak tartare and Côteaux du Languedoc

You might be surprised to know that red wine isn’t the first pairing I think of with steak tartare, which for those of you who haven’t tried it is chopped raw beef flavoured with punchy seasonings such as capers, parsley and hot pepper sauce. I actually think it pairs really well with sparkling wine, especially Champagne but last week I was down in the Languedoc and that didn’t really seem appropriate.

Hepple gin and venison tartare

Hepple gin and venison tartare

We think of gin even less than whisky as a pairing for food but with the incredible popularity of gin these days - and the need for the many new entrants to the field to create a distinctive image for their brand that could be about to change.

Tuna tartare with wasabi aioli and Prager Grüner Veltliner

Tuna tartare with wasabi aioli and Prager Grüner Veltliner

Not last week's match, actually but a great one from a couple of weeks' back just before I went to Paris and which got overlooked.

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Brasserie Chavot: all about the butter

Brasserie Chavot: all about the butter

What is it about the B-word at the moment? Every restaurateur and his dog seems to want to call themselves a brasserie, usually indicating the room is big and has red banquettes. But Brasserie Chavot would be better just called Chavot.

 The return of Henry Harris at The Coach

The return of Henry Harris at The Coach

I sometimes wonder if we value novelty too much. As an avid restaurant-goer the temptation is always to head for the the latest opening - but keeping pace with what’s new inevitably means you don’t spend as much time as you’d like in the places you actually enjoy.

A Champagne dinner fit for sommeliers

A Champagne dinner fit for sommeliers

One of the aspects of the World’s Best Sommelier competition I hadn’t really thought about is how on earth you create a menu for a roomful of sommeliers. And choose wine pairings they won’t be sniffy about. One way is to impress them with large format bottles and old vintages which is the route competition sponsor Moët et Chandon took . . .

Pairing champagne and summer food

Pairing champagne and summer food

How can champagne be used to create a summer tasting menu? Seafood is an obvious candidate but as food and wine writer Lucy Bridgers found at a Billecart-Salmon event at the Massimo Restaurant and Oyster Bar in London last year you need to choose your flavours carefully.

6 of the best matches for fish and chips

6 of the best matches for fish and chips

Now that fish and chips can found in every posh fish restaurant, wine has become as popular a pairing as a nice cup of builders' tea (good though that is). But which one?

Grüner Veltliner and salt cod

Grüner Veltliner and salt cod

I came across this unlikely combination while I was flying back from Argentina with the Brazilian airline TAM* who have this year decided to inaugurate a Brazilian menu in business class devised by a woman chef called Ana Luisa Trajano. And quite right too.

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