Match of the week

Tipsy cake, roast pineapple and Chateau d’Yquem

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on February 18 2013 at 09:09

Let’s face it, I don’t get to drink Chateau d’Yquem every day so what else could last week’s match of the week be than this stellar pairing I had at Dinner at Heston Blumenthal?

It was a dessert called tipsy cake which has been on the menu since the restaurant opened. Hard to describe - it’s a bit like a superlight sugary brioche with a layer of gorgeous gooey Sauternes-laced sauce underneath and is served with spit-roast pineapple. That was the key to the match bringing out all the apricot and tropical fruit flavours in the 2011 Yquem we were tasting. The dessert is dated 1810 but I bet they didn’t produce such a delicious version as that in those days - as Heston acknowledges in this video.

As I mentioned the other day in my post on whether great wine needs to be aged as long as we think it does it was extraordinary to be served an Yquem as young as that. Instinctively it seemed like baby-snatching but it couldn’t have been more delicious.

It may be worth applying that principle to cheaper Sauternes and similar sweet Bordeaux wines. And maybe thinking of roast pineapple when you next want to create a knock-out wine pairing for Yquem should you be fortunate enough to find yourself in that position . . .

I ate at Dinner as a guest of Chateau d’Yquem.

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