White onion and cheddar tart and Mayacamas chardonnay

I was really spoilt for choice with wine pairings at Claridges last week. (It’s not often I get to write a sentence like that …)

When you eat in their restaurant you can choose a bottle to go with the meal from the enviable selection in the shop downstairs, the only problem being settling on which one.

One solution is to work out roughly what you have in mind to eat before you go down there, a decision made rather easier by choosing from the very good value (for Claridges) set price lunch or pre-theatre. menu which is £49 for two courses or £58 for 3.

My companion, fellow winelover Barry Smith and I worked out that if we chose a red we would go for the ballotine of confit duck and the lamb navarin while if we chose a white we’d opt for the white onion and cheddar tart and Cornish brill with clams and seaweed butter.

In the event we discovered from head sommelier Emma Denney that they also had a 2018 Maycamas chardonnay from the Napa Valley on by the glass which meant one of us could have the tart and the other the ballotine with the bottle of Domaine 2005 Blagny La Pièce sous le Bois, a lesser known and comparatively modestly priced burgundy Barry had spotted on the shelves.

It also went really well with the navarin but the standout match for me was the chardonnay and the cheddar tart.

I’ve tried chardonnay with cheddar before but this wine, which had a wonderfully refreshing acidity you don’t always associate with Californian chardonnay, took the pairing to another level.

You can also buy it by the bottle from Claridges Wine Cellar for £75 (at the time of writing) which is great value given it’s £50 by the glass and read about it here,

Next time you have cheese and onion quiche think chardonnay …

See also The Best Wine Pairings for Cheddar Cheese

And for other chardonnay pairings The Best Food to pair with Chardonnay

I ate at the restaurant as a guest of Claridges

Roast veal and Gevrey-Chambertin

My general rule is not to buy burgundy or other expensive wines on a wine list because the mark-ups are just too painful but celebrating a friend’s big birthday at Bouchon Racine in London the other day it proved too hard to resist.

We’d chosen a sharing plate of best end of veal with morels and pommes mousseline (buttery potato purée) and were looking at light reds such as Beaujolais but kept being drawn back to the higher reaches of the list. Eventually we couldn’t resist a 2021 Frédéric Magnien Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes which sounded rather too young to drink but we hoped would hit the spot as indeed it did.

It was heady and fragrant, full of wonderfully pure fruit which showed off the delicate flavour of the veal and morels and an unctuously creamy sauce.

Sure, it would have been more affordable if I’d cooked for my friend or he for me and one of us had brought along a older bottle but then neither of us would have got our hands on such amazing ingredients and cooked them as well.

You can buy the wine from Yapp Brothers for £56 t which is obviously not cheap but not bad value for burgundy, especially Gevrey.

Occasionally it’s good just to splurge.

Chambolle-Musigny and game

No earth-shattering revelations this week, just a reminder that mature red burgundy is a brilliant match for game.

Our cooking group cooked up a feast on Saturday including partridge salad with beetroot and walnuts and an elaborate ‘chartreuse of game, a multi-layered beauty of a dish incorporating several kinds of game (partridge, pheasant and pigeon in this case), wrapped in vegetables (multi-coloured carrots and cabbage).

Neither of the dishes was particularly ‘gamey’ but had a distinctive game character you wanted to respect so thanks to my pal chef Barny Haughton for bringing along a delicate 2000 Chambolle Premier Cru Les Sentiers from Maison Roche de Bellene which was still astonishingly bright and fresh given the vintage. Chambolle is one of my favourite red burgundies especially with lighter game like partridge.

The best wine pairing for partridge

We also had a delicious (but not particularly photogenic) dish of gnocchi with wild boar and venison ragu which went brilliantly with a 2006 Gros Noré Bandol from Provence, an exotic, dark, sensuous red and one of my favourites with richer game dishes. Unfortunately I haven’t been buying it recently so am now clean out of it - I've just had to order a case of the 2012 (from Gauntleys in Nottingham if you want to do likewise)

Top wine and beer pairings for game

Scallop tartare and sauvignon blanc

What on earth do you do when you have a line-up of some of the best wines in the world in front of you? Do you attempt to match them or reflect more the mood, the company and the time of year? Or, given that they're indisputably the hero of the occasion, do you just go with the sort of food the kitchen does well anyway?

Venerable wine merchant Berry Bros & Rudd went for a combination of the second and third strategies - choosing for Burgundy specialist Jasper Morris’s leaving lunch a light summery starter of raw scallops with cucumber, radish and apple salad that wasn’t the obvious match for some simply thrilling white burgundies. But obviously nobody cared - it was an incredible treat to get to taste such wines.

The wine that ‘did’ hit the spot was an oak-aged 2014 Dog Point Section 94 sauvignon blanc* from Marlborough in New Zealand, very much in its prime, which absolutely sang with the scallops but would you turn your nose up at a 2004 Meursault or Montrachet? I suggest, dear reader, you would not.

The other standout combination rather than standout wines (they were all spectacular) were the two reds that were served with the cheese course of Montgomery cheddar, Tunworth and Cote Hill Blue (a blue brie from Lincolnshire) - a 2003 Vega Sicilia Unico and a 1997 Ridge Monte Bello. Great choice of cheeses - none were too strong or stinky and both reds were mellow and mature enough for their tannins not to create problems with the cheese - which can be the case with younger wines

The main course of lamb with grilled Provençal vegetables and an olive crumb worked predictably well with two grand cru Charmes Chambertins - a 2010 from Olivier Bernstein and a 2000 from Denis Bachelet and a 1999 Volnay Santenots-du-Milieu from Domaines des Comtes Lafon (in magnum)

And I should confess that we drank 2001 Chateau d’Yquem with the dessert - a lemon tart with orange carpaccio and lime (and maybe coconut) tuile

I doubt if any of us - including the Berry’s team - got a great deal of work done that afternoon ....

* which you can currently buy on special offer at £18.95 from Hennings and £19 from The Wine Society.

I ate at Berry Bros as their guest.