But what would you have it with? This is a question I get asked a lot. I never think about wines in isolation, there is always a food pairing that comes to mind (even if it is salted peanuts).
Last week I curated a lunch with wines from Zsirai winery in Tokaj in Hungary, at which we paired five very different wines with dishes cooked by super chef Shaun Searley at the Quality Chop House in London.
The goal was to showcase how well the wines matched with food in a restaurant setting, and the guests were sommeliers and wine buyers for some of the best restaurants and hotels. We surprised them with some unusual pairings and challenged their perceptions of what the ‘right’ wine is to have with certain foods.
Introducing people to new wines (and pairings) can be tricky. Everyone knows (or thinks they know) what they like, and they find comfort in familiarity. This can be a reason restaurant diners avoid catching the eye of the sommelier and plump for a sure thing, be it Sauvignon Blanc or Burgundy.
The wines of Zsirai, a small family-owned winery in Mád with an award-winning female winemaker, were:
an easy drinking and versatile white blend (Tokaj Dry)
a full-bodied, mineral-rich single-vineyard dry Furmint with notes of quince and stone fruit
an aromatic, spicy Hárslevelü (a rising star on the Hungarian wine scene)
a complex and intense sweet Szamorodni
a lusciously sweet, honeyed 6 Puttonyos Aszú with trademark high acidity
A pork shoulder croquette, deep-fried and crunchy and smeared with black pepper mayonnaise, hit all the right notes with the Tokaj Dry, cutting through the richness; the black pepper bringing out the warm spice notes in the wine.
Pairing the dry Furmint with smoked cod roe with radish and dusting of cured egg yolk was an easy choice, the rapier acidity of the Furmint was a perfect foil for the intensely fishy puree.
We matched the Hárslevelü with a game terrine, small chips of dried apricot emphasising the stone fruit character of this unusual grape variety – it was a winner with our guests.
The main course was a mighty Middlewhite pork chop (a speciality of the Quality Chop House), with their peach ketchup, matched with the Szamorodni. The wine (a late-harvest byproduct of Aszú making), is rich and complex with nutty notes and hints of warm spice from oak ageing, the sweetness complementing both the salty pork and the ketchup, getting rave reviews.
Although Tokaji Aszú, the noble wine of kings since the 13th century, has been typecast as a dessert wine (where it plays its role beautifully well), it’s a lot more versatile than that, so we paired it with cheeses served with a glowing crab apple jelly. All four cheeses were on point but for me the Sainte Maure goat cheese from the Loire and the Stichelton blue matched particularly well.
The inevitable final question is, where can I buy these wines? Zsirai wines are only available to the on-trade in the UK, so you will need to book a table at one of the many restaurants that have their wines on the list. And then catch the eye of the sommelier and order a bottle with your roast pork. The wines are imported by Jascots and represented here by Wines of Hungary UK
© Linda Galloway 2022
Picture credits: ©WinesofHungaryUK / Linda Galloway