Match of the week
Ceviche and sauvignon blanc
It’s rare that you keep on coming across a wine pairing that impresses you but my 10 days in Chile over the past couple of weeks have finally convinced me that sauvignon blanc is the perfect match for ceviche which seems to have become Chile’s national dish.
You might wonder why I hadn’t hit on it before. Well, previously I’ve found that the citrus that is generally used in the marinade tended to cancel out the flavours of the wine but in Chile I think they make it with slightly different type of fruit more like a cross between lemon and lime and also don’t use quite so much of it. Also the fish is fantastically fresh which makes seafood the top note rather than the base. (It doesn’t seem to matter much whether the fish is salmon, tuna or rockfish but their ceviche often includes raw onion another element that kicks sauvignon into touch)
Chilean sauvignon is also very fresh and sometimes saline without the powerful grassy or gooseberry character of sauvignons from countries such as New Zealand. Definitely better without oak and the younger the wine the better (so 2018 at the time of writing works just fine along with fresh 2017s)
If you’d like be able to check out all the food and wine pairings on the site you can buy a bundle of credits here to access my premium content.
And/or for regular updates on what and where I’ve been eating, drinking and travelling sign up for my weekly newsletter Eat This, Drink That, Live Well.