Food Match Awards 2012
Each year we select the most food friendly Gold Listed wines, and put them to the test alongside ten popular restaurant dishes to see which matches best. Here are the 2012 winners.
Scallops
Gavi La Battistina 2011, Piedmont, Italy
£6.00 @ Boutinot
About half our matches down the years for this dish have been Chablis, but for the second year on the trot our tasters went elsewhere. The La Battistina Gavi is, as Ransome’s Dock’s Martin Lam, pointed out, a fresh style of Gavi, and that needs to be borne in mind. But that’s why it worked here. ‘It brought a pretty floral note to the dish,’ said Hakkasan’s Christine Parkinson. ‘It gives something of itself without overpowering the food.’
White Fish
Herdade do Esporao Monte Velho White 2010, Alentejo, Portugal
£6.35 @ Charles Hawkins & Partners
This delicious, flexible Portuguese white was heavily in the running for the Scallops match, but in the end our tasters felt that it worked better here. ‘With white fish you need something quite delicate and understated, and this is a great-value wine,’ said The Tate Group’s Hamish Anderson. ‘There’s a nice gentleness to it – it will sit well in the background with the food – but it has a good salty minerality, too, to bring structure.’ ‘It’s a wine that’s happy to play second fiddle to the food – but very definitely in a good way,’ added consultant Caspar Auchterlonie.
Mushroom Risotto
Bodegas Hidalgo La Gitana Manzanilla Pasada Pastrana, Sanlúcar de Barrameda NV, Spain
£8.15 @ Mentzendorff & Co
This has, historically, been one of the hardest matches for our tasters. And so it proved again this year. Close to a dozen bottles were tried and rejected before our team hit on this match. Key to this superlative combination was that the manzanilla had some age on it, making it yeastier and richer and able to cope with the meaty ceps in the dish. ‘The dish is about savoury, the wine is about savoury. They work together really well – but the manzanilla brings a freshness as well,’ explained Hakkasan’s Christine Parkinson. ‘Sherry to the rescue!’
Veal
Domaine Begude Chardonnay Cuvée Terroir 11300 2010, Pays d’Oc, France
£7 @ Greene King
Cooked in vermouth and cream, this dish has occasionally caused our teams problems, and it’s not uncommon for them to get through a huge gamut of wine styles. This year was easier. Although both the meat and the creamy sauce are sweet, there is no real richness to the dish, and our judges quickly settled on the Domaine Begude Chardonnay as a clean, fresh match that went nicely with the meat, but also cut through the cream. ‘We went for an understated wine that, although it has nice round fruit, has the ability to sit in the background,’ said The Tate Group’s Hamish Anderson. ‘It gained a bit of weight with the dish.’
Pork Belly
The Rude Mechanicals Ephemera Viognier/Pinot Gris 2010, South-Eastern Australia
£6.65 @ Boutinot
Cooked with fennel seeds, the latter are a big influence on this dish. Its aromatics clashed with all of the reds that were tried, and our tasters were rapidly back in white wine territory yet again. The Rude Mechanicals – a 60/40 blend of Viognier and Pinot Gris – had a soft, juicy mouthfeel and an innate freshness that allowed both the meat flavours and the aromatics of the dish to show beautifully. ‘You need some lift on the wine, and it has that,’ said The Tate Group’s Hamish Anderson. ‘I liked this wine when I tried it on its own… I like it even more now.’ ‘There’s a lovely lifted freshness that makes everything just sing along,’ added Hakkasan’s Christine Parkinson.
Rack of Lamb
Berberana Viña Alarde Reserva 2006, Rioja, Spain
£7.99 @ United Wineries
There are times for going against fashion, and there are times for just accepting that classics are classics for a reason. This was one of the latter. Our tasters did try four different wine styles here, but in the end this terrifically priced Rioja was an obviously superior match. ‘I like the acidity in the wine,’ said Ransome’s Dock’s Martin Lam. ‘It’s so important with a fatty meat like lamb. And this is unashamedly traditional.’ ‘It’s incredibly well balanced,’ agreed Bread Street Kitchen’s Nigel Lister. ‘Nothing is out of place.’ The combination of sweet oak and sweet Tempranillo – pure, clear, understated flavours – was simply idyllic.
Beef Casserole
Le Clos du Caillou Bouquet des Garrigues Côtes du Rhône Rouge 2009, Rhône, France
£11.50 @ Bancroft Wines
The most expensive of our food-match wines (and right up against the £12 limit we set ourselves) this delicious Côte du Rhône, from 30 hectares of pebbly walled vineyard (hence the name) was an enormously popular wine with our tasters, providing far more class than its Côtes du Rhône appellation would suggest. ‘With a casserole, the flavours meld together, and you need something that’s well integrated. This is soft, round and has really good freshness so it works perfectly,’ said Bread Street Kitchen’s Nigel Lister.
Steak
Boutinot, Soldier’s Block Shiraz 2010, McLaren Vale, South Australia
£5.25 @ Boutinot
La Chapelle d’Escurac Médoc 2007, Bordeaux, France
£9.98 @ Enotria
Our tasters have occasionally come up with not one, but two winners at our Food Match tasting round, to go with different types of meat. And so it was this year. If you’re looking for a big chargrilled rib-eye, then the Soldier’s Block is your man. ‘It’ll be great. You can’t go wrong,’ said The Tate Group’s Hamish Anderson. ‘Perfect with those smoky, charred characters and tons of mustard in a gastropub or steak house.’
For those of you looking for something more elegant, then the Chapelle d’Escurac should be your go-to wine for fillet. The 2007 Médoc has lovely elegance and is drinking perfectly now. ‘There’s a neat, sappy character to this – an almost metallic, bloody flavour – that would be great with rare beef,’ said Bread Street Kitchen’s Nigel Lister.
Crispy Duck
Cien y Pico Doble Pasta 2009, Manchuela, Spain
£8.88 @ Liberty Wines
This match has often been the preserve of New World wines in the past, with their rich, silky fruit tending to work best with the big, sweet-and-salty flavours in the dish. But this year our tasters stayed in Europe, with a Spanish wine that did pretty much the same thing. Dark fruit, liquorice, spice and a silkily indulgent palate were a winning combination – especially for the price. ‘It’s got bags of character,’ praised Hakkasan’s Christine Parkinson, ‘with enough sweetness to be on the same page as the plum sauce, but it’s really refreshing, too. There was a commonality between the wine and the food, yet they were both quite different as well.’
Thai Green Curry
Turckheim Gewurztraminer Vieilles Vignes 2008, Alsace, France
£8.80 @ Boutinot
Kleine Zalze Vineyard Selection Chenin Blanc 2010, Stellenbosch, South Africa
£6.94 @ Matthew Clarke
No great surprise to see this match won by an aromatic white. But it was unusual to see it go to a Gewurz, rather than a Riesling, and to a wine from Alsace, rather than the New World. It was even more unusual to see a joint winner that was totally different in style – Kleine Zalze’s Vineyard Series Chenin Blanc.
‘It’s a fantastic example of food and wine matching,’ said Bread Street Kitchen’s Nigel Lister. ‘Both wines work, but in a different way. The Gewurztraminer wraps itself around the food, with its spice and fruit – the two work together; the Chenin lifts itself above the food and gives a rounded, appley character that stays in your mouth.’
The panel batted these two matches back and forth for 10 minutes, and since they were unable to reach a majority decision, gave out a joint award, deciding that both wines worked, but for different reasons. ‘It’s the minutiae of what we do for a living,’ said Nigel Lister happily.