Match of the week

Margaux and Turkish chicken with walnut sauce

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on November 13 2017 at 10:15

There’s nothing I love more than a surprise when it comes to food and wine pairing and I would not in a million years have predicted that a pukka Bordeaux would go with this exotic Turkish dish.

I - and probably you - would more commonly stick to classics like roast beef and lamb with a bottle of Chateau Labégorce Zédé Margaux 2005 but untroubled by convention my friend had cooked an intriguing dish of chicken with a thick walnut sauce. It was the rich earthiness and slight bitterness of the walnuts that set the wine off to perfection. It became even more velvety and plummy - an absolute treat.

She didn’t have a recipe - she’d more or less made it up - but I’m thinking it’s probably quite like this recipe from Sabrina Ghayour. Anyway I’m going to try it. The only thing you’d need to be careful about is the kind of sides you put with it. We had simply cooked vegetables from the garden which I think assisted the match rather than exotic Turkish vegetable dishes and salads

Sadly the wine no longer exists. The estate decided not to bottle it separately from 2009 according to this report from Decanter but there seem to be a fair few old vintages knocking around if you can find them at fine wine retailers such as Crump. Richmond and Shaw (and I suspect traditional country wine merchants)

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