Match of the week

Fish stew and an oaked Valencian white wine

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on February 12 2024 at 08:39

As those of you who follow me on instagram will know I’ve been in Valencia for the past two weeks, trying to improve my Spanish which hasn’t left a great deal of time for considered food and wine pairing but this was a great match at a restaurant called Rausell in the city centre.

The dish was called suquet de pescadores, a 'fishermens' stew' with hake (I’m guessing), clams, mussels and deliciously soft potatoes in a rich saffron-spiked broth. There was probably some tomato in there too and some very good fish stock.

As in many of the other Valencian restaurants I went to they didn’t have a local wine by the glass but very nicely opened a bottle of a rich oak-aged white called Blanc d’Enguera, a blend of chardonnay, verdil, sauvignon blanc and viognier (which they very generously topped up while only charging me for the glass which was only 4 euros anyway). Viognier generally goes with saffron so it was an excellent match.

There’s a YouTube video here (in Spanish!) if you want to have a go at making a similar dish.

The 2022 vintage I tasted doesn’t seem to be available in the UK or US (though it is in Germany if you check out wine-searcher.com but you can buy it direct from the producer’s website.

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