Wine With Food And What You Should Drink

By David Farmer

Wine goes with food though I find no natural pairing whereby the tastes of either are enhanced by the co-blending of flavours. Changing from light to heavier wines as the food becomes richer is about as far as my matching goes.

I often open oysters and prefer a lean, very dry, sparkling wine without much flavour. Same with raw or simply cooked fish, as the fish flavours are readily masked by wine. For lighter foods I would drink the Stratus Adelaide Hills Sauvignon Blanc 2017 for freshness and for fried fish the P. B. Burgoyne Barossa Valley Semillon 2016 for more depth and palate length. While for everyday drinking with lighter foods there is still stock of the weekend special, the Trial Bin W157 Adelaidean-Mount Lofty Range Adelaide Hills Chardonnay 2016.
 

Matching wine and food; at times more like chalk and cheese; the grand master Rubuchon says farewell, time stops with Musigny and Benjamin supplies the game.
 

Joel Rubuchon, his empire peaked at 32 Michelin stars, was the right chef for the Barossa and The Times obituary, 7th August, says it well: ‘In contrast to the pretty delicacy of the nouvelle cuisine, Robuchon liked strong, earthy flavours. Things had to taste of what they were. He distrusted artifice and became one of the saints in the movement that favoured cuisine grand-mère (grandmother’s cooking).’

I take wine and food seriously so thought nothing of driving to Orleans on the Loire, France, in the early 1980s, because a grower in Sancerre had told me of a restaurant with aged Burgundies. He was right, and the food of high standing became inconsequential and pushed aside, after one sip of the Musigny Comte Georges de Vogue 1962.

While I have few rules, I prefer to drink a great bottle without the intrusive taste of the food and when this happens I will choose something lesser to take with the food while periodically returning to the great wine. Regrettably such events are uncommon.

On Rubuchon The Times continued; ‘Yet it was his alchemy with mashed potato that made his name — although it was not just any mashed potato. No one who tasted his recipe, made with 25 per cent butter, could forget the experience.’

This reads like a metaphor for the Barossa Valley, not just a warm climate red but one exploding with 25% more flavour. We make many Barossa reds for your cellar so why not commence with the Crayford Barossa Valley Shiraz 2016 and recall we do advocate drinking the other heritage varieties and the Goat Square Barossa Valley Grenache 2016 will give great pleasure.

Over the last few years Benjamin has become a crack shot and my diet has improved with a regular supply of hares, rabbits, deer and kangaroo which are hung in the white wine, cool room for seven or so days. I enjoy saddle of hare and wrap this in the local Careme pastry of high butter content, and then roast. Serve with an aged red and the Stockwell Creek Reserve Barossa Valley Mataro 2012 will do the trick.