The ultimate kebab wine

What silliness is this? People don't drink wine with kebabs, surely? I'm not talking doner kebab here, gobbled hungrily, and usually drunkenly, on the way back from the pub, gums tingling with chilli sauce. I'm talking souvlaki - the Greek kebab. Chargrilled chunks of juicy, herb-infused lamb pulled straight off the wooden skewer, with sliced tomato, crisp lettuce, cooling yogurt or tsatsiki, wrapped in a freshly baked flatbread, bound together by a tight cone of waxed paper. This is the king of kebabs.

The Real McCoy
And if you take yourself off to the Real Greek's new Souvlaki &Bar in London's Clerkenwell, not only will you see the Real McCoy, you will also see people drinking wine with kebabs.

Owners Theodore Kyriacou and Paloma Campbell felt they owed it to Londoners to show them a proper kebab. So they opened the Souvlaki eaterie at the end of April on trendy St John Street, with Athens-born chef George Logothetis behind the grill. The pair met when Kyriacou opened fish restaurant Livebait, near Waterloo. But when Groupe Chez Gérard snapped it up and rolled it out, Kyriacou and Campbell moved on to open the Real Greek, off Hoxton Square.

Kyriacou was keen to scotch the myth that there's nothing more to Greek food than blancmange-pink taramosalata and smashed crockery. The critics - and public - loved it. And if you want to see what Greece is capable of on the wine front, it's best to head here. The Real Greek's list boasts a sizeable selection of its country's wines, with a fair few imported directly.

The Souvlaki & Bar offers an all-Greek list, with nine whites and six reds, plus one rosé and a sparkler from the Peloponnese, two of which were singled out by Campbell as good kebab wines.

But here's the thing: the Greeks serve kebabs another way - straight up, on the skewer, a quarter of lemon at each end, with a hunk of warm bread alongside (an olive oil-brushed sourdough). So, in the interests of research, we decided to try both styles of kebab with the wines - the latter obviously easier to replicate.

Incidentally, the Souvlaki & Bar offers pork kebabs through the winter months and lamb in the summer, starting at the end of May. We went for the lamb, as summer is almost here. Kyriacou gets his from a Welsh farmer via Harvey Nichols, and cheekily uses the swanky store's posh paper to wrap the souvlakis.

But would our ultimate kebab wine cope with both the unadorned flavours of the chargrilled lamb and its yogurt-dressed, bread-wrapped cousin? Would we even find our ultimate kebab wine?

The panel
Caterer's kebab-lovers consisted of Phil Crozier, wine buyer of Argentinian meatfest restaurant group the Gaucho Grill, London; Ed Hutchings, sommelier at Brian Turner's new restaurant in Mayfair; kebab aficionado Ashley Nichols, assistant sommelier at London's Chez Bruce; plus the Real Greek Souvlaki & Bar's co-proprietor, Paloma Campbell; and Caterer drinks editor, Fiona Sims.

The wines
We asked three suppliers, three sommeliers and the Real Greek to submit a range of wines that they thought would go with Greek-style lamb kebabs, with no limit on price. We got 15 wines in all, from gutsy Argentinean Malbecs to inky Negro Amaro from southern Italy, plus a posh Pinot from New Zealand, and - get this - a manzanilla sherry from Spain. All the wines were tasted blind first - to assess quality and potential kebab-worthiness - then unmasked for the pairing.

The verdict
Well, we did it; we found our ultimate kebab wine - or rather, wines. Sadly, we didn't manage to find a wine that coped with both the plain chargrilled lamb and the souvlaki, which, let's face it, was a tall order - the addition of yogurt and tomato was guaranteed to throw off palates. And there were a few surprises.

Crozier and Hutchings predicted, during the blind tasting, that the Carmen Cabernet Sauvignon (brought by Hutchings) would work best with the plain grilled lamb - which it did. The rest of us fell in behind them after we tried the match. "It even managed to pull the lemon flavour out," said a stunned Campbell, who was disappointed by her offerings when it came to finding the ultimate match - although the Domaine Tselepos Cabernet Merlot wasn't bad.

Nichols, who comes from Melbourne, which has the largest population of Greeks outside Athens (hence his authority on souvlaki), thought the Norton Syrah would come up trumps with the lamb, but it failed to stand up to the sweet, caramelised char of the meat (though it would shine later with the souvlaki).

Campbell also thought that the "ripe, aromatic fruit" of the Lebanese Massaya would stand up well to both kebabs, but all declared it overly sweet.

The Zinfandel, too, was predicted to come out on top, but like the Massaya, it stumbled because of its super-ripe fruit, but oddly worked much better when it came to the souvlaki. "It was the tomatoes," declared Campbell, "and the sheep's milk yogurt is less acidic than cows' milk."

Crozier can congratulate himself for bringing two wines that made it into the top two in both categories, but then matching wine to chargrilled meat is his raison d'être. Gaucho Grill's Argentinian house wine range, called Terruno, is sourced directly by him for this very purpose, and the Malbec-Merlot blend from Weinert came up trumps, as did Masi's superior Malbec-Corvina.

Then Campbell pulled the trump card - a retsina. "I don't know why I didn't think of it before," she says. "Everybody in Greece drinks retsina with souvlaki." But, as everybody here knows, or thinks they know, retsina just never seems to work when you try it back home. What is retsina, exactly? It's made just like any other white wine, except that small pieces of pine resin are added to the must and left with the wine until the first racking, giving it a distinctly pungent flavour.

So picture, if you will, three of the country's top restaurant wine buyers smacking their lips after tasting retsina - yup, it got the thumbs-up. To be fair, Campbell's retsina - Ritinitis Nobilis from Gaia Wines (available through Oddbins, 020 8944 4420, £4.98) - is a cut above, even spending some time in oak. But would our sommeliers ever dare list it? "If it's a good wine - and this is - then I don't see why not," says Hutchings. But did it go with the souvlaki? Er, no. Even Campbell thought it was too much for the bread-lamb-yogurt combo. But it did go with the plain grilled meat, working beautifully, said all, with the combined flavours of sweet, herby meat and zesty lemon.

So, by that measure, the manzanilla should have scored. Wrong - it was a disaster. Not that supplier Berkmann was that far off base - after all, the Andalucians wash down chargrilled pork pinchos with both manzanilla and fino, along with a whole host of other skewered meaty bits - but the lamb proved just too much.

And what about the posh New Zealand Pinot? Far too restrained, all agreed. The Cairanne lost it, too, as did the Pinotage.

The biggest surprise? Nichols's white Rhône, a Marsanne-Roussanne blend called Fleur de Crussol, which stood up to the souvlaki and wasn't bad with the grilled lamb either.

And the winners are…
Ultimate kebab wine Masi Passo Doble 1999 Malbec-Corvina, Tupungato, Argentina
Berkmann Wine Cellars, 020 7609 4711, £6.19

Runner-up Norton Reserve Syrah 1999, Argentina
Berkmann Wine Cellars, £6.20

For chargrilled lamb Carmen Reserve 2000 Cabernet Sauvignon, Maipo, Chile
Laytons, 020 7288 8888, £9.74
Gaucho Grill's Terruno Malbec-Merlot 2000 made by Weinert, Argentina
Stevens Garnier, 01865 263300, has a similar blend from Weinert, called Carrascal, at £4.92

Runner-up Il Meridione Primario 2000 Barrel-aged Negro Amaro, Puglia, Italy
Boutinot Wines, 0161-908 1340, £4.50

* All prices quoted are per bottle excluding VAT

Other wines tasted
Seghesio Zinfandel, Sonoma, California (Liberty Wines)
False Bay Pinotage, South Africa (Boutinot Wines)
Darriaud La Côte Sauvage Barrique-aged Cairanne, France (Boutinot Wines)
La Guita Manzanilla, Spain (Berkmann Wine Cellars)
Domaine Tselepos Cabernet Merlot 2000, Peloponnese (the Real Greek)
Mirambello 2000, Crete (the Real Greek)
Churton Marlborough Pinot Noir 2001, New Zealand (Tanners)
Fleur de Crussol 2000 Marsanne/Roussanne, Rhône (the Vine Trail)
Massaya 1999 Silver Label, Bekaa Valley, Lebanon (Tanners)