Pairings | Sauternes

The best food pairings for Sauternes

The best food pairings for Sauternes

Sauternes is a famously luscious sweet wine from the Bordeaux region of France but what kind of food should you pair with it?

The best wine to pair with rhubarb

The best wine to pair with rhubarb

You might be surprised to learn that rhubarb is a great ingredient to pair with wine. Generally dessert wines have to be sweeter than the dessert they accompany and rhubarb has a natural tartness that makes that easier to achieve especially when it’s served with wine-friendly cream as in a rhubarb fool, pannacotta or a creamy rice pudding.

The best wine pairings with Roquefort cheese

The best wine pairings with Roquefort cheese

Roquefort cheese is unusual in having such a frequently recommended wine match (Sauternes) that you may wonder if it’s worth drinking anything else but depending how you serve it there are a number of other options.

The best wine and liqueur pairings for trifle

The best wine and liqueur pairings for trifle

There’s no doubt about it, trifle is tricky when it comes to drink pairings. If it includes booze already do you serve more on the side? And what kind of booze should that be?

 What to pair with Epoisses (and other stinky cheeses)

What to pair with Epoisses (and other stinky cheeses)

What on earth do you drink with Époisses and France’s other famous stinky washed-rind cheeses such as Pont-l'Évêque, Maroilles, Munster and Langres? The problem is that the more mature and stinky you like your cheese, the tougher it will be on any wine you pair with it.

Sweet or savoury - what is the perfect match for Sauternes?

Discovering you could make a wine from grapes that have shrivelled with rot to leathery little fossils on the vine is viticultural history’s finest example of making a silk purse out a sow’s ear. There is a sense of the miraculous in every sip.

Cheese soufflé and old Sauternes

Cheese soufflé and old Sauternes

OK, OK. It wasn’t just *any* Sauternes but a bottle of 2003 Chateau d’Yquem and not just *any* old cheese soufflé but a Stinking Bishop double baked soufflé with hazelnuts and Comté sauce with pear, apple and ginger chutney

Wine of the week: a cut-price Sauternes

Wine of the week: a cut-price Sauternes

If you’re unsure what to buy it’s always tempting to go for a big name but when you find you’ve got an equally good option at half the price it’s mad not to go for that.

Scallops with Sauternes butter and oaked white Bordeaux

Scallops with Sauternes butter and oaked white Bordeaux

One of the treats I’ve lined up during lockdown is to have a weekly takeaway from a local restaurant, both to give me a break from cooking and hopefully help keep them in business and my first was a meal from one of my favourite Bristol restaurants littlefrench.

Foie gras and Sauternes

Foie gras and Sauternes

While I no longer eat foie gras myself (as explained here) for the French there is no other way to celebrate the réveillon, or New Year’s Eve.

Sweet Bordeaux and savoury food

Sweet Bordeaux and savoury food

Last week, the Union des Grands Vins Liquoureux de Bordeaux, the body that represents Bordeaux sweet wine producers, hosted a tasting of wines from six of the appellations they represent to partner savoury and sweet dishes at a lunch at le Cercle restaurant in Chelsea.

Chocolate and orange cake and Chateau Climens

Chocolate and orange cake and Chateau Climens

I’ve always considered Sauternes is too delicate a wine to pair with chocolate unless it’s accompanied by something like passionfruit with which it chimes in but it turns out if the wine is old enough - and good enough - it can handle even a chocolate cake.

Chateau d’Yquem with Gorgonzola and a pressed apple terrine

Chateau d’Yquem with Gorgonzola and a pressed apple terrine

OK, I don’t expect you to have a bottle of Chateau d’Yquem to hand, let alone a 1999 or 1989 vintage but this would work with any mature or not-so-mature Sauternes or similar sweet Bordeaux

Roquefort and Loupiac

Roquefort and Loupiac

With just over three weeks to Christmas - and even less time to order the Christmas wine if you haven’t already done so - it’s time for us laggards to focus on what we’re going to be drinking and that’s what I’m going to be doing this week.

What to drink with asparagus part I

What to drink with asparagus part I

Last night I had dinner at the Dorchester Grill Room, one of London’s grander hotel restaurants which has been given an absurdly baroque makeover reminiscent of what Balmoral must have looked like in Victorian times. The team in the restaurant though are bang up to date with one of the smartest sommeliers in town, Jason McAuliffe doing an impressive double act with the talented young chef Aiden Byrne.

The lemon dilemma

The lemon dilemma

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about ingredients that cause problems for wine and have come to the conclusion that lemon is one of the major culprits. Of course we add lemon to many things for a subtle lift - I’m talking about recipes where lemoniness (if there is such a word) is the essence of the dish.

Tipsy cake, roast pineapple and Chateau d’Yquem

Tipsy cake, roast pineapple and Chateau d’Yquem

Let’s face it, I don’t get to drink Chateau d’Yquem every day so what else could last week’s match of the week be than this stellar pairing I had at Dinner at Heston Blumenthal?

Plum and Frangipane Tart

Plum and Frangipane Tart

If you feel like baking this weekend here's a recipe from Christine McFadden's massively useful book Flour, a guide to how to use all the many new flours on the market.

Emily's peach and almond tart

Emily's peach and almond tart

One of the things I love about social media is that it's just that: social. You make friends with people through exchanging tweets and 'liking' their images on Instagram.

Coconut & Mango Yoghurt Cake

Coconut & Mango Yoghurt Cake

Rukmini Iyer's 'Roasting Tin' series has been a huge success so the sweet-toothed among you will be thrilled that there's now a book devoted to desserts and cakes - The Sweet Roasting Tin. I chose this recipe on the grounds that it would double as either. I reckon it would be a particularly good finale to a curry night.

Matching sweet wine and Sichuanese food

Matching sweet wine and Sichuanese food

Can Tokaji – the great dessert wine of Hungary, and one of the sweetest wines in the world – go with Chinese food, asks Margaret Rand? And if it can, would you want it to?

What to eat with your favourite wines this Christmas

What to eat with your favourite wines this Christmas

Although we wine writers like to think we might be able to encourage you to be more adventurous in your wine choices this Christmas the truth is you’re probably going to stick to the wines you're familiar with.

Top wine matches for Cornish Blue

Top wine matches for Cornish Blue

The sharp-eyed among you will notice that my recommendations have changed since I posted this article earlier today. I've revised my opinion since retasting Cornish Blue which I found in my local deli - Arch House Deli.

8 great drinks to match with Stilton

8 great drinks to match with Stilton

No Christmas would be complete without a slice of Stilton or its unpasteurised cousin Stitchelton. But what to drink with it? The usual answer is port - and that of course is classic - but here are some other drinks that make great pairings

French apricot tart and Cérons

French apricot tart and Cérons

On Saturday we celebrated the 50th wedding anniversary of some good friends - a rare occasion which deserved (and got) several splendid bottles including a magnum of Gosset Champagne and another of one of the best of our local winemakers down here in the Faugères, Domaine des Estanilles (a magnum of the 2002 Château des Estanilles which was drinking superbly)

Epoisses and marc de Bourgogne

Epoisses and marc de Bourgogne

Epoisses has to be one of the most difficult cheeses to match, not least when it gets to the almost liquid stage shown in this photo (a stage too far IMHO)

Cru classé Bordeaux and rack of lamb

Cru classé Bordeaux and rack of lamb

Just as last week’s match of the week was a classic - so is this week’s: the main course we had at Oliver Peyton’s National Gallery Café at a dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Circle of Wine Writers.

An Irish cheeseboard for St Patrick’s Day

An Irish cheeseboard for St Patrick’s Day

With all the fuss about oysters and Guinness and boiled bacon and cabbage you may overlook what must be one of the best ways of celebrating St Patrick’s Day: an Irish cheeseboard.

When should you drink Yquem?

Not a question I normally have to trouble my head about, I admit but which was prompted by an extraordinary wine dinner I went to last week at The Don in St Swithin's Lane.

Food and Bordeaux: What they served at the gala dinner at Mouton Rothschild

Food and Bordeaux: What they served at the gala dinner at Mouton Rothschild

I make a point of not going to Vinexpo, the biennial wine fair in Bordeaux (too hectic, too noisy) but it does mean you miss out on the occasional treat like the gala dinner that was held at Château Mouton Rothschild to celebrate the opening of their new chai.

Does great wine need to be aged?

Does great wine need to be aged?

It’s been an article of faith as long as I’ve been writing about wine that you need to age the best wines in your cellar. We sniff at consumers who buy and crack open a first growth as unsophisticated but maybe they’re the ones who know best?

Warm fig and almond pudding with Château Coutet Barsac 1996

Warm fig and almond pudding with Château Coutet Barsac 1996

I think I’m a bit fixated with figs at the moment. Last week’s match of the week involved them and so does this week’s but it’s a totally different affair.

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?

Apricot soufflé and Coteaux du Layon

Apricot soufflé and Coteaux du Layon

Why don’t more people make souffls these days? I include myself in that. They’re not that difficult, look so impressive and are such a lovely match for a dessert wine.

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