Double act

There was a time when even if you didn't know much about wine, you knew the one golden rule - red wine with meat, white wine with fish. It made sense when the fish was likely to be a simply grilled dover sole and the wine a ten-year-old claret. But although food and wine have moved on, it's still a brave customer who dares order a Shiraz with their chargrilled tuna.

Just how well red wine can pair with fish was demonstrated at a recent food and wine pairing lunch organised by the New Zealand firm Delegat's. It invited the New Zealand-trained chef Mark Gregory, who cooks at Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire, to devise a five-course menu that would match its wines.

One course was a Manakau broth (named after a harbour in New Zealand) with crayfish and coriander. It was an intense, rich soup flavoured with saffron and designed to go with a 1994 Hawkes Bay Cabernet Merlot. But the surprise was that a confit of salmon, cooked in goose fat and served with a light, sweet tomato sauce, was also more successful with this young red than with either of the Chardonnays also tasted with it.

Gregory's multi-layered, New World style of cooking is a perfect illustration of how today's more strongly-flavoured fish dishes are just as comfortable with red as with white. I went over to Gregory's own kitchen at Brocket Hall while he experimented with a range of dishes that disproved the adage. In one, a fillet of salmon was steamed over red wine then served with a sauce made from a reduction of salmon bones and red wine flavoured with cardamon, star anise, and roasted fennel. It was served with, among other things, king prawns that had been quickly fried with a dollop of red pepper pesto, and leaves of roasted aubergine.

Given the powerful flavours, the wine that went best was a six-year-old, oak-aged Faugères (Château des Adouzes) whose sweet, warm, woody notes went perfectly with the dish.

Another creation was a pan-fried fillet of sea bass served in an intensely herby jus with a touch of lemon peel, which dominated the other strong flavours on the plate including oyster mushrooms, a galette of potatoes and quenelles of spinach, carrot and parsnip. Again we found that the Delegat's Hawkes Bay Cabernet Merlot took on the dish successfully, the herbaceous notes in the Cabernet meeting and matching the stalky, herbal flavours in the sauce. "The texture of the fish is also important," explains Gregory. "If I had steamed it, the dish wouldn't have worked so well with the wine."

There are antecedents for serving red wine with fish. The French are particularly keen on cooking freshwater fish such as eel, pike, perch and crayfish in the local red wine - dishes like Pauchouse in Burgundy, matelote d'anguilles in Chinon or Bourgueil, or the epic lamproie Bordelaise, cooked and served with red Bordeaux. It is not uncommon for dishes to be sweetened slightly - to take away any harshness in the wine - by adding a touch of honey or, in a more recent recipe for Bar au Vin Rouge from Burgundian chef Bernard Loiseau (quoted in Mireille Johnston's French Cookery Course), a little puräed carrot.

Even with much simpler, lighter fish dishes, red wine can work well. Salmon and a light red such as Bourgueil is a classic pairing, the freshness of the wine cuts through the rich oiliness of the fish. "What you need is a young, fresh lean wine with a fair amount of acidity," says sommelier Gerard Basset, of the Hotel du Vin in Winchester. "A young Pinot Noir or a young Chianti can work well, but I don't like any wine that is too fleshy or oaky."

Adrian Wells of The Pheasants Hotel in Ross-on-Wye, another New Zealander and this year's joint winner of the Decanter/Robert Mondavi Wine by the Glass award, agrees. "I try to avoid any red wine with a high level of tannin because of the metallic flavour it tends to give off," he says. Wells has nevertheless found that powerful Italian reds like Salice Salentino Rosso and Amarone can work well with fish, given sufficiently robust saucing.

"What you have with these wines is a lot of fruit and a good level of acidity which can lift the flavours of the dish."

The two factors that have perhaps made the biggest difference to fish and wine pairings are spicing and cooking technique. More widespread use of oriental spices has created a new flavour profile for many fish dishes. Joël Antunès of London's Les Saveurs in Mayfair recently served an intensely-flavoured dish of roast turbot aux epices flavoured with cardamon, coriander, lemongrass, Szechwan pepper and ginger. Sommelier Claude Douard recommended the unusual combination of a vibrantly fruity but elegant Coche-Dury Bourgogne Pinot Noir 1991. It was perfect.

Techniques such as roasting or searing are also more likely to move the wine choice in the direction of red. At the up-and-coming Atrium in Edinburgh, chef Andrew Radford likes to give cheaper cuts like dogfish a fierce blast in the oven. "We roast them on a bed of roots, throw in some hard herbs like rosemary so you get a caramelised, earthy quality that goes really well with a young red like a Morgon or Fleurie."

There are, of course, fish that don't go so well with red wine. Oily fish such as mackerel, herring and sardines are not particularly successful - unless the oiliness is counteracted by other powerful flavours.

Very oaky wines or those with the wrong kind of fruit, like a very blackcurranty Cabernet Sauvignon, can also cause problems - but then they wouldn't go with chicken or a fruity pork dish either.

All that remains is to persuade the customer to be more adventurous. Radford of the Atrium doesn't believe it will take long. "The whole world food trend is throwing up some peculiar combinations of flavours and ingredients. Wine is just one of those ingredients."