I’ve been fortunate to present with Slow Food at the Ludlow Food Festival Taste Workshops for over seven years now. It’s always an honour to be invited but over recent years as well as presenting I’ve also been asked to supply wines to accompany various dishes for the great michelin starred chefs of the land and to show these at Taste Workshops.
This can be extremely daunting as it would be sacrilege were the wines to over power any of the dishes but conversely if the dishes were to over power the wines, making them taste diluted and thin, wouldn’t do at all either.
It was a real pleasure to present a Slow Food Work Shop with michelin starred The Checkers, Montgomery.
Chef proprietor Stephane Borie’s kitchen offers the best in classic French cooking and in 2011 The Checkers became the fourth restaurant in Wales to win a Michelin star. Their menu is classically French, using the best local ingredients.
My challenge was to pair four savoury dishes selecting only one wine and to pair a rich pudding dessert. I selected Phillipe Sauger’s Domaine Sauger, Cheverny rouge 2010. This is a blend of Pinot Noir and Gamay, it’s a light and fresh wine but with enough tannin, ripeness and acidity to stand up to most dishes without overpowering the lighter style dishes. You will see that the dessert needed a full flavoured fortified wine and for this I selected Sirromet Sun Wine, from the Granite Belt, Queensland.
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- Checkers, Montgomery
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- Chef, Stephane Borie
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- The Frenchman and the Farmer’s Daugters
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- Duck selection
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- Black pudding and pork crackling with apple sauce.
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- Creme Brulee, Ludlow Slow Food taste workshop
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- The wines: Dom Sauger rouge and Sirromet Sun Wine. Ludlow Slow Food taste workshop
The taster menu was outstanding as follows:
Beetroot macaroons – a delicious savoury and sweet dish that is very difficult to pair. The ripeness of the pinot noir paired beautifully with the sweetness of the macaroon and the gamay savoriness worked well with the beetroot earthy flavours. First pairing was a success and I was very relieved.
Home smoked tomato soup with goat’s cheese cream – ahhh, this is another dreadfully difficult pairing to get right; tomatoes!! They’re naturally very high in acidity and notoriously difficult to pair. Fortunately the Sauger red was up to the job, with Cheverny being fairly cool climate in the Loire the wine retains a naturally high acidity which complemented the tomato, this also beautifully cut through the goat’s cheese and wines from this area are beautiful with this style of cheese. So, not a disaster at all, the pairing worked very well, phew!!
Assiette of duck with smoked breast, ballotine of leg, roulade of foie gras & cherry dressing – now this is more like it, classic French food paired with the perfect wine. Pinot Noir for the Loire works tremendous well and Sauger rouge from Cheverny was no exception. The fresh, crispness of the wine cuts through the fat like a hot knife through butter and the wild strawberry and bramble fruit was a match made in heaven for the gamey meat complemented by the cherry dressing. Absolutely delicious. This was the star pairing for the savoury dishes.
Black pudding, crisp free range Welsh pork crackling, creamed potato, roasted pear & braising jus – At the opposite extreme and taste profile to the Beetroot Macaroons this dish pushed the Sauger red to it’s limits. Black pudding needs a big wine and the Sauger rouge toughened the challenge out admirably with just enough tannins and grip to hang on in there. Not a match made in heaven by any means but it worked!
Caramel crème brûlée accompanied by nougatine cigarette with white chocolate, passion fruit mousse & summer berries – what an amazing dessert! You’re everyday sticky wouldn’t hold a flame to this and would be over shadowed. Unlike the savoury dishes with desserts it is important that the wine is sweeter than the dessert. The fortified Sun Wine from Sirromet was the perfect match. This is a wine made from the almost extinct Chambourcin grape that originally hales from Burgundy. The wine is made like an aged Tawny and has delicious chocolate notes, molasses and refreshing acidity. It was the perfect match for this dessert and everyone loved it. The perfect finish to a fantastic taste workshop.
Trailblazing Wine 