Aubergines with walnut sauce and amber wine

It’s hard to pick out one pairing out of the multitude of dishes we were served with amber or orange wine during my first visit to Georgia last week but I’m going for one we barely ever failed to find on the table - grilled aubergine with walnut sauce.

Amber is the name that Georgians are increasingly using for 'skin contact' white wines which are made in qvevri - large egg-shaped clay pots which are buried in the ground. The juice is left in contact with the grape skins for a period that can range from a few days to a few months and accounts for the deep colour and exotic dried fruit flavours (often peach, apricot and quince) of many of the wines.

They are more structured and tannic than a classic white wine so pick up well on bitter and savoury flavours especially walnuts and aubergines (eggplant), both of which are ubiquitous in Georgia. The two together make the perfect amber wine pairing.

We were served this particular dish at Shumi winery and it would go particularly well with their 2017 Iberiuli Mtsvane Qvevri Dry amber wine (which you can find in a Tblisi wine shop called 8000 vintages) but other richly flavoured amber wines would work brilliantly too.

You can find a similar recipe here.

I was invited to Georgia by Georgian Wines and hosted at the meal by Shumi.

Aubergine parmigiana with Nero d’Avola

I’d already flagged up southern Italian red wines as a good pairing for aubergine (or eggplant) but it was good to be reminded just what a great match nero d'avola can be, especially with aubergine parmigiana

If you’re not familiar with the dish it’s a fabulous baked dish of fried aubergines layered with passata (tomato sauce) and cheese (this is Guardian writer’s Felicity Cloake’s ‘perfect’ version based on testing a number of different recipes)

The one we had at Planeta’s Buonivini estate in Noto was based, I think, on the one in their cookbook Sicilia which was compiled by Elisia Menduni from family recipes belonging to founder Diego Planeta’s two sisters Anna Maria and Carolina and was served at the ambient temperature of a warm July evening rather than hot.

We drank three vintages of their flagship Santa Cecilia wine which is made from Nero d’Avola with it - the 2005, 2007 and 2009 of which I enjoyed the 2007 most. It’s an elegant wine you wouldn’t necessarily expect to go with such a rustic dish but it set off the wine to perfection.

It was also, of course, a case of the right dish, in the right place at the right time.

You can buy the current 2011 vintage of Santa Cecilia from Great Western Wine for £23.50. (They're also selling the basic but very enjoyable Planeta Segreta Rosso 2014 for £8.76 at the time of writing.)

Other wine matches for aubergines/eggplant

Aubergine (eggplant) and Zinfandel

This coming weekend sees the 16th annual festival of the Zinfandel Advocates and Producers (ZAP) in San Francisco. I went one year and it was an absolute blast - two great sheds filled with hundreds of enthusiasts enjoying this great belter of a red.

Zinfandel is believed to come originally from Croatia but is essentially the same variety as southern Italy’s Primitivo. And it does pair very well with the strong flavours of southern Italian food especially cooked tomatoes and aubergine/eggplant. It’s a great wine to drink with an aubergine bake or with pasta dishes like the Rigatoni with Aubergine, Sausage and Zinfandel sauce in Winelovers Kitchen. And I love matching it with a good moussaka or a lamb and aubergine stew

At the time of writing there were still tickets available for Thursday’s Good Eats and Zinfandel Pairing event which takes place from 6-9pm at the Fort Mason Center at the Herbst Pavilion where a selection of the 300 wineries that are exhibiting offer a dish to go with their wines. Click on the name of the event for details - featured dishes include Zinfandel braised wild boar with truffled polenta, mussels with chorizo and black beans, braised buffalo osso buco and BBQ ribs.

Image © Николай Григорьев - Fotolia.com