Anchovies and Txakoli

What pairing can I possibly I pick from a trip to San Sebastian, the most gastronomic city in Spain, possibly even in Europe?

Well, I’m going for a simple but brilliant one: anchovies and the deliciously crisp local white wine Txakoli.

You get this combination everywhere - the locals love their anchovies and take great pride in the ones they cure themselves.

This is a pintxo from Antonio bar in which they’re wrapped round some diced, spicy guindillas and some sweeter pickled (I think) green pepper, a punchy mouthful that would defeat most wines but surprisingly not the 11.5% txakoli which sailed both through them and practically everything else we threw at it over the 36 hours we were in the city.

The bottle to the right is made by Basque family producer Txomin Extaniz which cultivates the precipitous vineyards just outside the town which form part of the denomination of Getariako Txakolina. You can buy it from Ocado, Oddbins and Cambridge Wine Merchants for £14.99 or thereabouts* which is admittedly not cheap but it’s not an easy wine to produce and worth it for something quite unique.

There's also a quirky way of serving txakoli which is poured from a great height to preserve its slight spritz as this video explains.

(*Look out for promotions and, in the case of Ocado, of those 25% off deals!)

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