Beef cheek arancini with a (very special) Spanish garnacha

In some cases it doesn’t matter what form an ingredient takes, if it’s present in a dish it dominates the match. So Claire Thomson of 5 o’clock apron’s innovative beef cheek and black rice arancini which she brought to a (very soggy) outdoor picnic last week hosted outside by wine importer Carte Blanche was just as good a pairing with a grenache as braised beef cheek would have been. In fact the dark nutty rice added an extra dimension which made it even more interesting.

The wine - a 2018 Spanish garnacha from called Camino de Otsaka was admittedly a bit special though - almost more like a red burgundy than a grenache and quite thrillingly intense. It’s from Aseginolaza & Leunda in Navarra who make their wines in microscopic quantities with a minimum of sulphur and without fining or filtering. Only 365 bottles of the Osaka were produced of which only 60 bottles made their way into the UK. That’s reflected in the price of between £40-45 a bottle - you are literally paying for a wine almost nobody gets to drink. You can buy it from Element Wines in Scotland, Chesters of Abergavenney and Bin Two in Padstow who are also selling it as part of their Wine Car Boot case.

You can find some of Claire’s other recipes on this website and in the Telegraph for which she writes regularly.

I attended the tasting as a guest of Carte Blanche Wines.

Ox cheek (again) and Jumilla

I know I talked about ox cheek a couple of weeks ago (with nero d’avola) but here it is again in an even better combination with Jumilla at a lunch hosted by wine importers Morgenrot at Bar 44 in Bristol.

Jumilla, for those of you who are not familiar with it, is a full-bodied red from the south-east of Spain based on the monastrell (mourvèdre) grape. This wine was the 2016 Goru 38 Barrels, a blend of monastrell and cabernet sauvignon. You can buy the 2015 version from Ake & Humphris in Harrogate.

What was clever about the match - part of a six course lunch in which all the pairings were really well thought out - was that it involved three elements that played to the rich almost porty sweetness of the wine: the braised ox-cheek which was cooked in red wine, calçots (which are basically young leeks and have a natural touch of sweetness) and an unctuously creamy cauliflower purée. Sipped alongside these rich, sweet and savoury ingredients (there was also a slice of aged sirloin) the Jumilla kicked beautifully into touch.

Given the other good matches which you’ll find on the site, it suggests that ox cheek (or tail for that matter) is the perfect match for the strong sweet reds that are so popular right now. And for other mourvèdres.

Try this delicious José Pizarro recipe for ox cheek

Ox cheek ragu and nero d’avola

Nero d’avola may not be a grape variety you’re familiar with but in a recent blind tasting of 25,000 consumers carried out by Majestic it proved by far the most popular choice

So maybe it’s no surprise that it worked with a hearty pasta dish like the ox cheek and porcini ragu I had at Bomboloni in Bristol at the weekend.

The wine in question was drier than the appassimento style that proved so popular with Majestic’s customers (when you see appassimento on a label it indicates a sweeter style) but it was a lovely warm, rich wine called Plumbago which sounds like a painful back problem but is in fact a Sicilian flower.

I was chatting so busily to my friend that I failed to notice the vintage we were drinking but you can buy the most recent 2017 vintage from Exel Wines for £13.24 a bottle or £14.50 from winedirect.co.uk (£13.66 if you buy a case)

Here are some other nero d'avolas from an article I wrote for the Guardian a couple of years ago, if you're interested in knowing more.

Slow-cooked beef cheek and Cotes du Rhone

There’s so much inexpensive Côtes du Rhône about that it’s easy to forget that it can be a sufficiently substantial wine to take on a richly flavoured dish, especially if it comes from a named village and a good vintage.

The dish, which we had at Clarette in Marylebone, was a main course of slow cooked beef cheek with a luxuriant olive oil-based mash, onion and bone marrow - the charred onion really adding to the success of the pairing.

And the wine? The powerful Domaine des Maravilhas, Maestral Rouge 2015, Côtes du Rhône Villages Laudun (a classic blend of Grenache, Syrah and Mourvèdre) which comes from a biodynamically run estate. It doesn't retail in the UK but obviously a similar style of Côtes du Rhône would work equally well.

I ate at Clarette as a guest of Inter Rhône