Pasta with pork, peas and lemon and bardolino

So often a wine takes us through several courses these days (which, of course, is a virtue) but I’m rather arbitrarily spotlighting just one dish on the menu we had at Sonny Stores in Bristol the other night as the ideal match for the Bardolino we were drinking.

It was a pasta called paccheri served with a sauce of pork shoulder (cooked in milk, I would guess), with peas and lemon zest, a light summery combination that went perfectly with the wine

Bardolino is a light fruity red from north-east Italy, made from the same grapes as Valpolicella. (There’s a fuller description of it here)

To be honest it wasn’t the best example - sorry, Sonny’s*, you can do better - but there are more attractive ones out there including this one from Majestic which is very reasonably priced at £7.99 if you buy any six bottles. Which you always should at Majestic as their single bottle prices are generally a bit toppy. Oh, and chill it lightly too

* Their pasta is amazing though which is why I go there so often.

Spaghetti with courgettes, basil, smoked almonds and Bordeaux rosé

I was sent a really unusual rosé the other day from biodynamic Bordeaux wine estate Chateau le Puy, their 2019 Rose-Marie.

Unusual because it was deep pink, almost like the traditional clairet, intensely savoury and most of all because it was a whopping 15%. You could have easily drunk it with a rare steak or a rack of lamb.

In the event I had it with something rather lighter - a dish of spaghetti with courgettes, basil smoked almonds and old Winchester cheese at the hotel I was staying at last week, The Sun Inn in Dedham and it went really well with that too - the slight bitterness of the basil and the smokiness of the almonds bringing out the sweetness of the fruit.

I reckon it would also go with a cheeseboard - in fact it’s basically a red masquerading as a rosé as well it might be given that it’s £49 a bottle (from low intervention wines).

Could you pull off the same trick with a cheaper rosé? Of course you could provided it wasn’t too sweet - I wouldn’t go for a pinot noir rosé, for example but the Wine Society has a delicious dry Bordeaux rose, the Château Bel Air Perponcher Réserve 2020 (currently out of stock but hopefully coming back in as I've only just been sent it) which is a rather more modest £9.50 and 12.5%. Or a Bandol rosé which has a bit more character and structure than a typical Provençal rosé.

See also The best food pairings for rosé

I ate at the Sun as a guest of the hotel and was sent the Le Puy rosé as a sample.

Penne with gorgonzola and broccoli and malbec

Now here’s a wine pairing with pasta I didn’t wholly expect. The sauce - a gift from a neighbour - was a creamy gorgonzola one to which I added (just to make it fractionally more healthy ;-)) some steamed broccoli I had left in the fridge. (Well, it was raw but I steamed it!)

In general I go for white wines with creamy pasta sauces - and off-dry wines with blue cheese - but happened to have a bottle of young fruity Argentinian malbec open (the Punta de Vacas I made my wine of the week) and it really went brilliantly.

The cheese wasn’t that strong, mind you, and the broccoli added a slightly vegetal edge that kicked the wine into touch but it was interesting how well it worked. My only cautionary note would be that the wine was only 13.5%. A more full-bodied malbec might have overwhelmed the dish.

My neighbour says she enjoys a Gavi di Gavi with it too.

For other pasta and wine pairings see Wines to match different pasta sauces

Cappellacci with cime di rapa and alvarinho

OK, I know I wrote about dumplings last week and stuffed pasta isn’t *that* different but if they’re both delicious with wine why not?

This week’s match was at a new neighbourhood restaurant in Bristol called Sonny Stores which turns out to have quite a pedigree as the chef Pegs Quinn previously worked at the River Cafe then as head chef at the currently closed Bianchi’s and during the summer at the appropriately named Lockdown Pizza.

Anyway I didn’t know all this when I ordered the cappellaci* which are basically twisted ravioli, stuffed in this case with cime di rapa and bathed in a glorious puddle of melted butter. However I did anticipate they would go with a crisp dry white and so it proved in the case of a Quinta de Gomariz alvarinho (Portugal’s answer to albarino) which was still amazingly fresh for a 2017 vintage.

Not rocket science maybe but the temptation always is to reach for an Italian wine with a pasta dish isn’t it and this is proof that other countries can do the job too. (I also find Portuguese reds often work with Italian food.)

*Thanks to an instagram follower @deborahdalfovo for identifying the pasta shape as I’d forgotten to note it down!