Match of the week

Duck tagine and Moscatel

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on January 11 2016 at 11:02

I certainly feel duck’s status as one of the best ingredients to pair with wine has been enhanced by this week’s match of the week

It was one of the main two courses at the latest session of the monthly wine club I’m running with Itamar Srulovich and his wife Sarit at Honey & Co and as ever with those two was incredibly inventive: basically a duck tagine with clementines and apricots toped with kadaif pastry - an ultra-exotic duck pie for which I hope they’ll at some point give the recipe!

It went well with a number of the full-bodied white wines we tried with it but I particularly liked it with the headily aromatic 2013 De Martino Moscatel Viejas Tinajas from Chile which is aged in clay amphorae (a pairing that makes sense when you think how well duck goes with gewurztraminer). It also went really well with an Austrian Rülander (also an orange wine), an oaked white rioja, a white Crozes Hermitage and - most surprisingly to me - a lush Newton Johnson chardonnay from Hemel-en-Aarde in South Africa

You can currently buy the 2014 vintage of the moscatel from Les Caves de Pyrène at £14.20 a bottle, Joseph Barnes Wines Direct at £15.50 and £15.99 from Handford Wines.

NB We won’t be holding a wine club in February but will be starting a new series in March. If you’d like to know when the dates and themes are confirmed send your email address to events@matchingfoodandwine.com and we’ll put you on our mailing list.

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