Pairing ideas for red wines

• If you like red meats, we know that well elaborated, robust, powerful and concentrated red wines go well with this food. Therefore, a good pairing could be with Reserva wines from Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Priorat, Somontano or Penedès.
• For lamb or jelly meats it is recommended a young red wine and for chicken meat, the red wine to choose will depend on how it is prepared: if it is roasted goes very well with a young red wine, if it is with a tomato sauce, onion and aromatic plants an tempranillo would be the perfect wine. If it goes with a stronger sauce with mushrooms and roasted potatoes, a full-bodied wine like merlot or a cabernet sauvignon Reserva would be better.
• If you are going to eat pasta with Bolognese sauce or sauces with tomatoes and vegetables, the reds are also a good choice, better a young red or a few months ageing in barrel.
• Red wine goes very well with different kinds of cheese. If you try a table with varied cheeses you can drink Ribera del Duero, Rioja or Penedés red wine.

Some basic rules for serving wine

Obviously, finding the right wine for each food is a fundamental element for an unforgettable gastronomic experience. But we must also be very clear about the following rules when serving different types of wine:

• White or rosé wines are served before reds.
• Light wines will always be served before the full-bodied ones.
• Cold wines are served before tempered wines.
• Wines should be served in a growing sense at their alcoholic content.
• It is advisable to accompany a regional dish with a wine of the same origin.

Do you want to share some more advice with us? We’re all ears!

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How to Prepare the Perfect Spanish BBQ in 3 Steps:

As mentioned, thanks to our Mediterranean climate, we spend a lot of time eating outside. That means we Spanish know a thing or two about holding a good barbecue, and we can boil it down to three tasty steps:

1. The Vermouth

The true drink of the summer barbecue isn’t Pimms or…madre mia…lager and lime. It’s Vermouth! (That’s Vermut if you want to try one of the premium Spanish brands). It’s a wonderful herby concoction, which at 15 – 22% is capable of putting guests in a delightfully chilled frame of mind ahead of the main feast. It’s also a wine that you’re allowed to ice cubes in without anyone getting sniffy about it. Add a slice of orange, and you’ve got summer in a glass.

If you’re new to Vermouth, here’s a quick overview of this very tasty tipple in ‘Origin and Preparation of the Vermouth’.

2. The Meat

Spain is a country of bullfighting, vast plains filled with sheep (and grapes) – surrounded by fish. If you want a decent meat dish, look to Spain. Vegetarians may want to look away. The classic, of course, is paella, but not the sacrilegious version which Jamie Oliver served up. (Google #PaellaGate to see everything that went wrong with his recipe). No. Real paella is made with calamari, shrimp and mussels. But there’s so much more to Spanish barbecue than just paella, such as ribs with a sherry glaze. Or try steaks with some Valeón cheese. Then there’s pork burgers made the Spanish way with pepper and Jamón serrano. Locate a good delicatessen, and stock up on as much quality Spanish produce that’s escaped the country.

3. The Wine

Then there’s the wine. With Vermut aperitifs downed, and the meat making delicious smells over the glowing charcoal, it’s time to pop a few wine corks. Thankfully, barbecued meat is one of the easiest foods to match. Cooking with smoke calls for wine aged with oak. Chewy meats like lamb, beef and pork will need red, tannic wine to deliciously break down the proteins, and fatty, fried dishes like paella will need more acidic wine. Of course, seafood like shrimp and calamari will tend to go with white wine created in coastal regions. To recap:

• For barbecued lamb or beef, try a Gran Reserva Rioja like Faustino I. It has the oak to match the smoke, and the tannin to take on the protein.

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• Pork will need something with a more intense flavour, like a lovely old vines Garnacha. Baltasar Gracián Old Vines Garnacha is just the ticket. Those old vines produce much less juice, with a greater concentration of flavour, giving a burst of cherry on the palette, and a slightly balsamic aroma that just screams ‘match me with pork!’.

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• With fried seafood (as in authentic paella), try La Marimorena. It’s a light, acidic white, and when young, it has a refreshing spritz of bubbles that further cuts through fish oils. The typical taste of Albariño is of peaches too. That makes an interesting change from the ubiquitous use of lemon with fish.

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Making a Good First Impression

“Right this way your Highness,” you say incorrectly, as the Queen is not a princess, “I mean, right this way My Lady,” getting it wrong again because the Queen is not a Countess, before adding, “I mean, right this way Your Majesty.”

Running ahead of her, you can arrange the kitchen in the proper manner. At the table, the cutlery on the outside must be the utensils that you expect to use first. The next cutlery in will need to be for the following course, and so on. Put her glass above the cutlery on the right, and a plate for bread above the cutlery on the left. As the Queen is advanced in years and progresses slowly down the hallway, there’s just time to throw on some more formal wear. When she opens the door, you stand resplendent in a top hat, white tie and waistcoat, neatly laundered trousers, and coat with tails.

Was that a look of disdain on The Queen’s face? Of course! White tie is far too formal for casual dining, and is only for diplomatic events or weddings. You decide to distract her with the paté.

“Paté, m’am?” You say so that ‘m’am’ rhymes with ‘farm’, as you realise too late that it should rhyme with ‘jam’.

“That depends,” she says, “What wine are you going to serve it with? And please, call me Betty.”

What to Serve with Paté

This pairing had better be good. Get it right, and there could be a knighthood coming your way for Services Rendered to Inconvenienced Queens. Get it wrong, and she might set the corgis on you.

Duck is a fairly fatty meat as it is. The liver of a fattened duck in particular is going to need an acidic wine to cut through the fat droplets, and a great match would be a Sauternes like Château Suduiraut. Both the paté and the wine are of similar weight in the mouth too. What’s more, there’s a pleasing contrast of the sweetness from the wine with the savouriness from the duck.

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“Yes. Didn’t Wine Spectator give the 2005 Château Suduiraut 93 points?”

“Gosh, you certainly know your wines Betty.”

“Well, one has to when one’s the Queen. And don’t be so patronising. But suppose one wanted to mix things up a little and try something new. What would one drink then?”

The Queen’s really testing you now. Luckily, you buy several wines at a time, and have a bottle of Torelló Vittios on hand. It’s an unorthodox choice, but it’s like a Spanish Sauternes. There’s a good amount of acidity on the palette. In addition, it has a weighty mouthfeel to match the duck, and it has that sweet profile to contrast with the savoury meat. The flavours – peach, apricot and honey – are all nice accompaniments to duck, which is often served with a sweet plum sauce.

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Leaving with a Good Taste in the Mouth

As the mechanic rights the carriage and the Queen rises to leave, she utters, “Torelló Vittios and foie gras is such a lovely combination. If only they didn’t make paté in such a barbaric fashion.”

“Have you read this article on The Wine of Life? It’s called ‘Dan Barber’s Foie Gras Parable’, and it talks about a chef who makes the stuff in a humane way.”

“Oh, that’s interesting.”

You silently berate yourself that now she knows, the Queen will eat all of the humane paté in existence, and there will be none left for you. As she clears the front door, pour yourself a large glass of Sauternes.

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A Good (If Fattening) Creamy White Wine Sauce Recipe:

If you’re looking for a great standard recipe, ‘Try This Wine Sauce for Monkfish. Seriously!’ is a really good starting place. A slightly more luxurious (if fattening) recipe is as follows:

• Either cook some meat in a pan and reserve it, or add a little meat fat to a pan;
• Add in 25 grams of butter;
• Next, put in a 140ml of dry wine;
• Dollop in four tablespoons of creme fraiche;
• Mix until it’s all consistent, and then introduce some meat (which you may have reserved from earlier).
• But what white wine should you choose? Each varietal will bring a different set of flavours to the dish as different as ripe, juicy peaches or green, cut grass. The best wines for a creamy sauce will themselves be creamy, full bodied if possible, buttery, but there are a lot of wines to choose from:

Malvasía

This grape makes very heavy, full bodied whites. It will match the creamy sauce perfectly, but it will probably give more aroma to the dish than actual flavour. This variety is very floral, with some citrus fruit aromas. Guía Peñín gave Microvinifications Malvasia De Sitges 89 points, which makes it well worth a look.

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Viognier

This varietal would be lovely in a creamy white wine sauce. Viognier is a rarity in white wine as it’s full bodied, and would match a big creamy sauce very well. It’s also well known for being peachy. The classic combination with peach flavours would be ham, as the fruit brings out more of the meat’s qualities. Try Sumarroca Viognier, and thank us later.

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Sauvignon Blanc

I tried this the other day. I made the sauce with a quarter pint of New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc to accompany the pan fried chicken breasts wrapped in prosciutto. It was fantastic. However it was very filling, and as I used quite a lot of creme fraiche, I realised I couldn’t make it an everyday occurrence as I looked in the mirror the next day. Yet Sauvignon Blanc was a good choice. The wine typically tastes of limes, and cold climate versions will have pronounced herbaceous notes that pair well with the vegetables you might be serving.

Chardonnay

The way Chardonnay is made heavily influences how it turns out. Try to find a version that’s full bodied with pronounced fruity notes, like Mâcon or Mâcon Villages. Some of these have been aged on their lees, which will give the buttery notes that we’re looking for, and the kinds of fruit flavours that you get range between tropical to apple. Augustus Chardonnay is a brilliant Spanish version with a telling 90 points from Guía Peñín.

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Cider

Yes, I know, I know. It’s not technically a wine. However some quality ciders taste surprisingly like wine, and you can mix them into a white sauce. I tried it with turkey stroganoff and served it to my mother. She did not approve. The problem was that I’d murdered the sauce by cooking it for too long, but I was a student – it tasted alright to me. Cider will give your sauce that alcoholic apple juice tang, that would perhaps match a pork dish better than turkey.

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Food and wine pairing is part art and part science. What goes well with fish cakes for you may not be a great match to somebody else. We’ve all got our own preferences and tastes, and that extends to how we pair our wine and food. Some people swear by tried-and-tested traditions, others prefer to experiment and try new things. Whatever your approach, it is clear that serving wine and food together can change how we perceive either or both.

Traditionally, what goes well with fish cakes?

When pairing wine with fish cakes (and most seafood, for that matter), conventional wisdom points to dry white wine. Of course, there are many styles of dry white wine, just as there are many styles of fish cake. There may be no such thing as a perfect pairing, but some wines do lend themselves better to some fish cake styles than others. Let’s take three common fish cakes and suggest a good pairing for each.

1. Plain fish cakes

“Plain” is a relative term, and is not necessarily a bad thing. Here, we’re talking about fish cakes made from whitefish, cod, haddock and the like. These are the lightest in flavour and usually the most delicate in texture. Knowing what goes well with fish cakes of this kind involves consideration for the weight of both the wine and the food. The oily, fried breadcrumb coating is also going to be a consideration.

Your best bet here is a lean and light-bodied white wine, with high acidity and little to no oak ageing. Think along the lines of a young Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadet, Pinot Grigio or steely Chablis.

• We recommend: Finca La Colina Sauvignon Blanc 2015

Alcohol content: 13%

Serve between 2ºC and 5ºC

Optimal consumption period: 2015-2017

The wine does not need to be decanted

Best served in Sauvignon Blanc Glass

Buy Finca La Colina Sauvignon Blanc here.

2. “Meaty” fish cakes

Granted, there’s no actual meat in there – we hope. These are your weightier, meatier fish cakes. Tuna and salmon are typical here. Maybe even crab, depending on your definition of “fish cake”. Where the previous style was light and almost fluffy, these are denser and heavier in the mouth. As a result, they can handle – and basicall, require – a slightly heavier wine.

Medium or full-bodied white wines are a nice pairing here. White Burgundy (or other oaked Chardonnay) is ideal, as is most Chenin Blanc, Semillon or even barrel-fermented white Bordeaux.

• We recommend: Enate Chardonnay Barrel Fermented 2010

Alcohol content: 13,5%

Serve between 6ºC and 12ºC

We recommend to decant the wine 1 hour before serving

Best served in Chardonnay Glass

Buy Enate Chardonnay Barrel Fermented here.

3. Thai fish cakes

Our final style is a favourite for many. Pairing wine and Thai fish cakes can be a lot of fun. The Asian influence and chili heat of the dish opens up new possibilities for pairing. Depending on the type of fish used, you could happily pair your Thai style cakes with any of the wines we’ve already mentioned. If you really want something special, though, read on.

The sweet chili heat of the Thai fish cakes goes particularly well with aromatic white wine. It’s all the better if you can get your hands on an aromatic white that is off-dry, meaning that it has some residual sugar without being totally sweet. Classic options here include a lot of Muscat, Riesling and Gewurztraminer.

• We recommend: Summaroca Muscat 2015

Alcohol content: 12%

Serve between 2ºC and 5ºC

Optimal consumption period: 2015-2017

The wine does not need to be decanted

Best served in Riesling Glass

Buy Summaroca Muscat here.

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So, what goes well with wine? Food! Forget about nightclubs and music videos, and let’s put a bottle of Dom Pérignon on the dinner table and really put it to the test!

Dom Pérignon 2006 in a nutshell

What are we dealing with, then? Image aside, Dom Pérignon is a prestige cuvée vintage Champagne produced by the esteemed house Moët & Chandon. Unsurprisingly, it’s got some very strong critics’ scores, with 96 points from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, and 95 points from Wine Spectator.

Not every year in Champagne yields grapes that are high enough quality to produce a vintage wine, but Dom Pérignon 2006 comes from an especially good year, where hot and dry weather conditions led to particularly ripe grapes.

Tasting Dom Pérignon 2006

• Visually, it’s got a delicate gold colour and a fine mousse of brilliant bubbles.
• On the nose, there is expressive fruit and floral character at first, though Champagne yeast flavours and toasted bread come through underneath.
• In the mouth, Dom Pérignon 2006 is simply beautiful: A silky initial mouthfeel with rounded fruit flavour gives way to explosive acidity and long, lingering finish.

3 food matches for Dom Pérignon 2006

Champagne is often thought of merely as an aperitif wine, but quality bubbles are excellent with a wide range of different foods. Dom Pérignon 2006 is about as quality as bubbly gets, so it’s a great food wine. You could pair this wine with any amount of foods, but such a special (and, let’s face it, expensive) wine deserves something a little special!

1. Dom Pérignon 2006 and foie gras

It doesn’t get much more decadent than foie gras, the occasionally controversial French delicacy. Incredibly rich and fatty foie gras is traditionally paired with sweet Sauternes. For something a little different, though highly memorable, swap out the sweet wine for the bone-dry acidity of Dom Pérignon 2006. The biting freshness of the Champagne will cut through the dish and provide a beautiful balance and harmony in the mouth.

2. Dom Pérignon 2006 and caviar

Another delicacy worthy of a truly special Champagne, caviar is deliciously rich, salty and fishy. The salty character in particular provides an interesting counterpoint to the wine. Salt in food emphasises body in wine, bringing a new lease of life to the already round and generous mouthfeel of the Dom Pérignon. A real treat!

3. Dom Pérignon 2006 and truffles

Truffles or any quality mushroom-based dish is a match made in heaven for Dom Pérignon 2006. The umami flavour found in mushrooms emphasises acidity in wine, making for a seriously tangy and refreshing food and wine pairing!

Getting thirsty? Buy a bottle of Dom Pérignon 2006 here and try these food and wine pairings for yourself!

Want to know more about Champagne and other sparkling wines? Download our free ebook, The Sparkling Wines Guide: A Crash Course on Cava and the Sparkling Wines of the World!

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Picking the right wine for your Chardonnay carrots

Good chefs swear by the quality of their ingredients – and we do, too! You may not always think of wine as an ingredient, but when it comes to our recipe for Chardonnay carrots, it’s perhaps the most important ingredient of all! Picking the right wine can make or break the dish, but don’t overthink it. As the name suggests, this recipe calls for a Chardonnay wine, but you can experiment with other white wines too if you like!

For best results, though, it’s gotta be a Chardonnay. The exact wine is up to you, but in all cases, make sure that it’s a wine you’d happily drink yourself. If you cook with a poor quality wine, you’ll end up with a lousy dish. Nobody wants that!

• Our pick: We’d love to say a fine white Burgundy, but let’s be realistic.Castillo de Monjardin Chardonnay 2016 will be just fine. From the value-driven Navarra region close to Rioja, this is the right mix of quality and value. With a beautiful array of fruit, floral and herb aromas, this’ll do nicely with our Chardonnay carrots!

Chardonnay carrots recipe

The wine is key here, but it’s not the only ingredient. As with all produce, the fresher stuff you can get, the better. Visit your local farmer’s market or organic supermarket to get the best possible veggies.

• 150 milliliters of Castillo de Monjardin Chardonnay 2016 (or Chardonnay of your choice)
• 500 grams of baby carrots
• 1 handful of fresh thyme
• 4 tablespoons of butter or margarine
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Chardonnay carrots method

This is deceptively simple, so don’t worry. There are a few important steps that you’ve got to follow, and you’ll be chowing down on some seriously tasty Chardonnay carrots in no time.

1. First things first: Open your Chardonnay and pour yourself a glass! We’re cooking with wine, after all! While you’re doing this, preheat the oven to 220°C.
2. Take a large strip of tinfoil, about a metre and a half in length. Fold it in half.
3. Arrange your carrots, thyme, butter, salt and pepper (if using) in the centre of the tinfoil. Fold up each side to create “walls”, and pour in your Chardonnay.
4. Scrunch the tinfoil into a sealed package and place in a baking tray inside your preheated oven.
5. Cook for about 45 minutes, until your Chardonnay carrots are nice and tender, having absorbed the wine.
6. Top up that glass of Chardonnay, serve and enjoy!

Making luxury Chardonnay carrots

The freshness of your ingredients will make or break this dish, and picking the right wine is also crucial. A Chardonnay like the one we’ve recommended is full of flavour and will really make for a tasty, easy dish. If you want something really special, we’ve got two extra tips:

• Add cumin or other spices before putting your Chardonnay carrots in the oven, for a more exotic flavour!
• Trade up your wine by picking a full-flavoured Australian Chardonnay, like Pierro Chardonnay 2002. This mature white wine offers a vast array of complex aromas and flavours including toffee, peach and vanilla.

Happy cooking!

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First things first, though…

What’s the best wine for a red wine gravy?

When selecting a red wine for gravy, we like something full-bodied and full-flavoured. We don’t want it to overpower the gravy, necessarily, but we want to know that it’s there! Think along the lines of a Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec or Shiraz. You can’t go wrong with a Bordeaux blend, particularly if it doesn’t carry the Bordeaux price tag.

• Our pick:
  

  Enate Cabernet Merlot 2013. It looks the part with its dark red colour, has interesting flavours and aromas like blackberry, blackcurrant and herbs, and it’s got a nice full body. In short: a great gravy wine!

Any full-bodied dry red wine will work for your red wine gravy. For those of you tempted to cheap out and grab a little bottle of supermarket cooking wine, take heed: If you wouldn’t drink it, you really shouldn’t cook with it! We don’t necessarily advocate making your gravy from a bottle of Château Margaux, but don’t be afraid to spend over €5 anyway!

Red wine gravy ingredients

With the wine sorted, it’s time to gather the rest of your ingredients. You may find recipes that call for onions, basted chicken juices and other bits and pieces. For us, simplicity is a beautiful thing. What our recipe may lack in complexity, it more than makes up for in flavour!

• 200 ml of Enate Cabernet Merlot or other dry, full-bodied red wine – pour yourself a glass from the remaining 550 ml and get cooking!
• 3 tablespoons of cornflour
• 600 ml of quality chicken or turkey stock, homemade if possible!

Red wine gravy method

We said we like to keep it simple, right? That’s the case here, too. Follow these simple steps and you’ll be slurping up some delicious red wine gravy in no time!

1. Mix your cornflour with the same quantity of wine until it’s nice and smooth.
2. Mix in the rest of the wine.
3. Heat the chicken or turkey stock in a pan, then stir in the wine and cornflour mixture.
4. Simmer until bubbling, then serve or refrigerate for up to two days.
5. Enjoy!

Making a fancier red wine gravy

The above recipe won’t let you down, and the wine is a solid choice. If you want to make your red wine gravy better, you can always upgrade your wine choice a little. There’s a fine line between spending too little and too much, but if money’s no object then why not trade up a little. For the fine red wine gravy experience, we’ve got just the thing!

• Our top red wine pick:
  

  Cullen Cabernet Sauvignon Merlot 2000. From Australia’s Margaret River, this one is a real step up from our earlier choice. Again it’s a Bordeaux blend. It’s not cheap, but look for a Bordeaux wine from 2000 and you’ll pay a hell of a lot more. Treat yourself!

Red wine gravy and wine pairing

Your best bet is to pair your gravy with a glass of the wine you used to cook it. It’s convenient, it means you won’t waste wine, and you know it’ll be a good match!

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Asparagus

This vegetable has green, nutty flavours. As it happens, aged sauvignon blanc is great with this vegetable, as the more time it spends in a barrel the more nutty, vegetal flavours it takes on. However when you hunt for this wine – be careful. Only the better quality versions will have these flavours, so make sure the blurb on the bottle talks about the wine’s flavour rather than just aromas.

Green Bell Pepper

When sauvignon blanc is young and unoaked, it has a completely different character. Warm climate versions will have more citrus fruit, but cold climate sauvignon blanc will have more green salad flavours. Look for a sauvignon blanc produced in the last year or so. Palacio de Bornos Sauvignon Blanc from a fairly northerly Spanish region has some of these green salad notes.

Mushroom

Amontillado Sherry is a wonderful accompaniment for mushrooms. It’s so savoury, and definitely the wine of choice for people who like Marmite. Juan Piñero Amontillado is an affordable option which Robert Parker gave 91 points. Just imagine how well the strips of bacon from the quiche will go with the mushrooms and the sherry.

Cabbage

This is a rarer grape variety. Yet for those who like their veg, it’s a must. It’s grown in much colder climates such as Austria, Germany, and even Britain, although occasionally a planting was set up in the New World. The young style is best with cabbage, giving green vegetable flavours such as cabbage.

Black Olive

Strawberries and black olives are one of the more interesting combinations that chefs are turning to. It also explains why rosé and anti-pasti are such a good combinations. At any rate, throw some olives on your plate to go with the quiche, and match with a Merlot/Tempranillo rosé like Heretat Sabartés Rosat, which will have those strawberry notes. The great thing about olives is that they also contain olive oil which fills you up fairly quickly, meaning you’re less likely to reach for another slice of quiche.

Samphire

When it’s in season, samphire is wonderful. It has all the crunch of beansprouts, mixed with the greeny flavours of pepper, and with a slight salty tang. If we were complimenting the vegetable’s flavours, you might choose a Manzanilla Fino like Manzanilla La Guita. It also has a salty tang. Yet an off-dry, honeyish Reisling would be a delicious contrast with the salty flavours, and might pair well with the other flavours in the dish.

Bread

All right – this isn’t strictly speaking a vegetable. Yet there are wines that have bready notes, and having a few slices of healthy wholemeal with your meal can fill you up before you get round to the more fattening quiche. Look for an oak aged Chenin Blanc to go with it. The bottle should have developed notes of toast and bread through the oaking process, which would be heavenly with a crusty roll.

Butter

Again, I don’t really think that butter grows in the ground. Yet butter does go nicely with potatoes, which are often an accompaniment to quiche which adds bulk to the dish. Buttery notes are particularly evident in oak aged chardonnay. Try Can Feixes Chardonnay, which enjoyed 8 months in the barrel in contact with its lees, providing lots of lovely buttery notes.

What to Eat With Quiche When You Don’t Give a Flying Flip

It is of course possible that you quite like eating quiche, and couldn’t care less about healthy additions to the plate. Good for you. Here’s 15 Unexpected and Crazy Wine Pairings for the gastronaut with a daring palette.

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Wine From a Cool Region

The Champagne region is in a very Northerly part of France. The average temperature is 10?, and it rains about as much there as it does in drizzly London. As a result, the vines have trouble photosynthesising enough sugars. The grapes tend to be a bit insipid, and after the first round of maceration, so is the wine. Well – how on Earth did it become so popular?

Enter the British

You may not want to mention this too loudly around French people. However in the 1600s, the British used to buy in barrels of wine from Champagne, and not ascribing the sparkling nature of wine to ‘evil spirits’ but to a scientifically controllable process, they added in a second fermentation. This happened to make the wine more drinkable too by boosting the flavours. So, purposefully sparkling wine from Champagne was born – in England.

Royal Ascent Helped Champagne on Its Way

One tale of how Champagne became so popular centres on court politics in France. The Regent of France, the Duke of Orléans, had a favourite courtier, who liked the sparkling version of Champagne which the British were fond of. Up until that point, the French had tended to think that sparkling Champagne was a wine fault. (It isn’t, but here’s How to Spot 3 Common Wine Faults). Nonetheless, when the Regent’s favourite took to sparkling Champagne, the Duke gained a fondness for it too, and then everyone followed suit. At no point did anyone question whether wine from a cold, marginal region was all that good, and so like Furbies, Ugg boots and Pokemon Go, Champagne became a craze.

Caviar – from the River Po?

You used to be able to get authentic caviar from Turin. The right fish lived in the River Po in great abundance, but you can’t get wild sturgeon caviar from there now. You see, sturgeon are very vulnerable to overfishing. When you think about it, caviar production is the last thing a dwindling fish species needs – removing a fish’s eggs before they’ve had time to breed. Also remember that the fish need 15 to 20 years before they can reproduce. Stocks of sturgeon have dwindled in the Black and Caspian Seas, and every now and then, there are bans announced on fishing there. If there wasn’t, beluga caviar would go the same way as caviar from the River Po. Thinking about it, eating a species to death leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Do Champagne and Caviar Even Go Together?

Champagne is a wine produced several miles inland. Its flavours have developed around an inland cuisine, and it’s not a particularly crisp, acidic wine which normally pairs well with fish. Meanwhile, if you’ve bought salted caviar, you really need a wine that’s a bit sweeter. Unsalted caviar could still do with a better bubbly companion.

A Much Better Combination

There are sustainable fish roes out there. However the joy of beluga caviar is the pop that a big pea sized bubble makes in your mouth as the rich fish juice spreads out over your tongue, and wafts through your nasal canal. The other roes tend to be smaller, and blander. Yet this is where modern science can save the day. Buy yourself a molecular cuisine kit, and create spherification caviar at home. You don’t even have to stick with a fish flavour, and instead, you can create fruit or even alcoholic ‘caviar’. If you were to stick with a fishy caviar, try pairing it with Mar de Frades Brut Nature. It’s a sparkler made with the Albariño grape. That means it has good acidity, which makes it great with oily fish, and its lemon flavours are perfect with seafood.

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