Match of the week

Beef shin pie and a Languedoc red

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on November 10 2014 at 23:00

It’s amazing how many different styles of eating you can pack into a week, particularly when you’re travelling. At the moment I’m in sunny Chile stuffing myself with seafood and sauvignon blanc so I'm finding it hard to remember that just six days ago I was in rain-ravaged Britain craving pies and stews.

As next week’s match is bound to be Chilean I’ll opt for a pie. It's one one of the pairings I devised for a customer evening at Islington butcher’s Turner & George.

(Declaration of interest: co-owner Richard Turner is a mate so I agree to help them choose some wines they could sell in the shop and match them with different cuts. I get paid in meat which strikes me as an excellent arrangement.)

Richard cooked up some veal to go with a gruner veltliner, some really porky sausages with the SW6 London syrah I wrote about the other day and some pheasant we matched with a Volnay then heated up the cracking ‘Polly’s beef shin pie’ they sell to go with an organic Languedoc red - the 2011 Mas des Dames “La Dame”.

By popular vote the La Dame just inched it over the Volnay/pheasant combo. It’s a satisfyingly rich full-bodied blend of grenache, syrah and old vine carignan that is absolutely made for a pie or rich beef stew.

You can buy the wines from the Turner & George shop (I think I deserve at least another lamb chop for telling you that) or in Roberson in Kensington if you’re the other end of town.

I couldn't take a picture of the pie as I was conducting the tasting. This picture is © fkruger - Fotolia.com

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