Match of the week

Pork and beans with Pierre Gonon St-Joseph

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on September 13 2010 at 08:00

Beans are one of the great underrated aids to matching full-bodied wines as I was reminded at the weekend when we combined a dish of pork and lima beans with a fine St-Joseph.

The beans and pork had been cooked for 6 hours together so were full of flavour and fall-apart tender, providing a wonderful backdrop to the powerful and complex wine. It was a 2006 from Pierre Gonon, at Mauves in the Ardèche. The estate is cultivated by his two sons Jean and Pierre, using only natural treatments and natural yeasts in the winery and treading the grapes by foot. There’s a good description of them here by their American importers Jolivin and here from Vine Trail who sells the wines in the UK.

The 2006 is currently available from Vine Trail for £19.95 and - rather more expensively - from Berry Brothers & Rudd who are charging £28.95 for the ’07 and ’08 vintage. If you think that’s a lot the vineyards are apparently precipitous and have to be worked entirely by hand. A cheaper Syrah would of course pair well with this type of dish too.

Gonon apparently also make a fine white St-Joseph which I haven’t yet had the opportunity to try.

Image © teleginatania - Fotolia.com

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