Winter comfort food, says my editor, informing me of the looming deadline for the latest Fresh Winter edition.
“Pies, we have a feature on pies, perhaps you could write about something to drink with them”?
Cue mild panic. Pies! Champagne and oysters - a well-known food and beverage combo; sauternes and blue cheese - ditto; roast lamb and claret; but... Pies! Tomato sauce... hmmm, not so good through a straw?
A hook, looming deadlines, call it something witty like “The Loomingnaries” could be a best seller?
Quickly dial up English writer Fiona Beckett’s Matching Food & Wine website which has been a saviour when I’ve been posed unusual/uncommon wines or foods and asked for a matching suggestion.
Yes: As I was already surmising, ignore the pastry, which is a vehicle for delivering the main ingredient (mostly meat of some sort), although it can impact on texture. Focus on the filling becomes my mantra as the mild panic diminishes.
Just a nagging concern... can I really write an entire column on pies? Heck, I’m already 150 words in!
Some sort of meat stew base, steak flying solo a classic, or in typical pairings steak and mushroom, steak and onion, steak and cheese, steak and oyster and the slightly more controversial steak and kidney. Mince of course, venison, lamb, chicken, pork and the door-stop worthy mutton.
The red meat versions lend themselves to fuller bodied red wines: Australian shiraz and cabernet, New Zealand syrah (should be lovely with venison), an aged Bandol (ditto), Spanish monastrell or tempranillo, Cotes du Rhone from France, Californian zinfandel or Italian primitivo should all make a good fist of the job. I suspect that stout would also pair well?
Lamb: perhaps an Italian sangiovese or Chianti where that extra acidity can cut through the fattiness, also Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, or cabernet sauvignon/red Bordeaux and Rioja.
Chicken brings in white options such as a fuller-bodied chardonnay, a drier chenin blanc, cider as well... a golden ale could work too.
Pork pies are less seen here but are common pub food in the United Kingdom where a pale ale would be a contender. Cider could also work and I might also opt for a Chenin Blanc.
The classic mutton pie just seems too oily to me to work well with wine, but a cooler climate syrah with bright acidity might just do it.
All in all, I think pie matching might just hit some unfurrowed ground. Have fun trialling your own pairings.
Here are three I “test ran”.
2021 Trinity Hill Gimblett Gravels Syrah
Price: $39.99
Rating: Excellent to outstanding
Engaging aromatics, dark berries and spice, oak scents, woodsmoke, super fruit expression. Youthful and intensely flavoured, carrying similar characters to the nose with added white pepper, the structure still to the fore with time ahead of this, yet approachability too. Delicious zestiness that gets the salivary glands going. Nice complexity. Venison, any steak option.
2020 Jacob’s Creek Double Barrel Rum Barrels Shiraz Cabernet
Price: $19.99 promo
Rating: Very good to excellent
Menthol and eucalypt aromas leap from the glass, mint, sweet tobacco leaf, berryfruit underlay. Sweetly fruited but initially flowing to a drier mid-palate with oak notes, spices and bold fruit, then the sweet fruit reappears on the close. Rich, bold and very user friendly, in the slot to enjoy. The fruit sweetness swells with aeration. Perhaps pepper steak or steak and onion.
2020 Main Divide Merlot Cabernet
Price: $21.99
Rating: Excellent
Gunflint, woodsmoke, excellent fruit intensity yet a sense of elegance too. Again, good fruit depth, a refreshing coolness, berryfruits and blackcurrant with some appealing leafy aspects. Good structure behind this, there’s generosity and drinking pleasure with nice freshness. Nicely done. Post reveal, sub $20 on promo, great value. Lamb, steak, steak and kidney.
