Match of the week

Roast kid and dry Mavrodaphne

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on May 2 2016 at 08:42

As it was my first Easter in Greece - which was celebrated a month later than that of the western Christian church this year - what could I focus on but what to drink with a Greek Easter lunch?

The centrepiece is a whole roast lamb or kid on a spit - in the case of the family I was staying with, kid. It’s simply seasoned with pepper, plenty of salt, stuffed with herbs such as thyme and rosemary then cooked slowly over the coals for 2 1/2-3 hours. The tastiest bits are the bits you pick with your fingers off the carcass and the kokoretsi - the offal, which is wrapped in the intestines and also roasted over the fire. That may, I realise, put off the more squeamish among you but it is truly delicious.

You could drink a white with this - the Greeks drink more white wine than red but the return of meat to the menu after lent calls for a bit more of a celebration. In our case that took the form of a magnum of the 2013 vintage of Gentilini’s Eclipse, an exotically fragrant dry mavrodaphne that was predictably great with the lamb but also particularly good with the more gamey flavour of the offal. If you're a Bandol fan you'd love it.

Other Greek reds such as agiorgitiko and xinomavro would obviously be good too, depending on where you are in Greece. This is definitely an occasion to drink local.

I was invited to spend Easter with Petros Markantonatos and Marianna Kosmetatos of Gentilini

If you’d like be able to check out all the food and wine pairings on the site you can buy a bundle of credits here to access my premium content.

And/or for regular updates on what and where I’ve been eating, drinking and travelling sign up for my weekly newsletter Eat This, Drink That, Live Well.