The ultimate roast pork wine
With a CBE and two flags flying his name over London's Grosvenor Square, Brian Turner has done very well for himself. He's also our host for this tasting session, intended to discover the best wine to go with your Sunday roast. It's a natural choice, as Turner's restaurant in the Millennium Hotel Mayfair serves the kind of British food that would make your mother green with envy.
Steak-and-kidney plate pie with oysters and kidney gravy, roast Lincolnshire duckling with pear and apricot stuffing, smoked eel fillet with streaky Cumbria bacon on a warm potato salad - this is comfort food central, and the perfect venue in which to find our ultimate Sunday roast wine.
But which roast? Caterer has already covered steak and lamb kebabs (31 October and 29 May), so this time it's roast pork. To be exact, roast Gloucestershire Old Spot.
The verdict
All the wines submitted were deemed very drinkable - some were even considered "a great glug". But only a handful of the wines actually made the match, with a surprise contender for ultimate accolade.
There was a reason for this. We asked suppliers and sommeliers to submit wines to go with roast pork and all the trimmings. We were thinking of loin or shoulder with rivers of creamy fat, crispy crackling, crunchy potatoes and apple sauce. What we got was Turner's equally good but more refined version: roasted pork fillet with a Madeira-sploshed meat jus.
The two main factors that threw our vinous contenders were the absence of fat, which would have helped out the more gutsy wines, and the omission of apple sauce, which almost certainly would have rounded out some of the drier, more tannic wines submitted.
Apologies to the suppliers - we loved all of your wines, really. But it just goes to show how the omission or addition of one or two ingredients can upset the balance.
You see, the thing with Sunday roasts is all the trimmings. All those small but powerful embellishments - from stuffings to jellies, relishes to sauces - are a bit of a minefield for wine, not to mention the addition of a crust, be it honey, mustard or otherwise.
The trick is to gauge what the trimmings might taste like once they're all thrown together, and take it from there. You might have to give up the mature little Burgundy you were planning on (which would be buried under a cacophony of flavours) in favour of something bolder and brighter, probably from the New World.
Even Turner's roast pork wasn't as simple as we first thought. The exquisite gaminess of the meat was gently enhanced by a rub of ground coriander, paprika, cayenne, thyme and garlic. Then there was the Madeira.
And, as we've discovered with these tastings, those wines we thought would definitely work invariably didn't after the blind tasting when we tried the match. Nobody had singled out one of our two winning whites as our ultimate Sunday roast pork wine. New Zealand Chardonnay can be a great match for many things but roast fillet of pork with a Madeira-rich jus? But, as Matt Wilkin said: "It was such a well-made wine, and it had enough weight to combat those strong flavours." Michaela Clayton added: "It brought a freshness to the dish."
The Grüner Veltliner (Dr Unger, from Morris & Verdin) stunned everybody -+ we singled it out in the initial blind tasting as a potentially great pork match. Grüner Veltliner can do no wrong at the moment. It is many sommeliers' grape of choice to accompany a meal throughout, so it's no surprise it stood the test. "It brought a fruity element into the dish in the same way that the apple sauce would have done," said Rowley Leigh. Wilkin was more reverential, and said: "It cleans you out and lifts you up."
Turner was a huge fan, too. But what would he normally choose to drink with a pork roast? "I tend to get stuck on countries," he said. "I'm really into South Africa at the moment, so a Merlot or Shiraz works well for me with any roast meat."
People tend to choose a red wine to drink with a roast, and the day's entries reflected this. Of course, if you're an Australian, you would choose a sparkling red with a roast, said Adelaide-born Wilkin, defending his wild choice, Yalumba's D Cuvée Black 1996, which is a blend of Shiraz and Cabernet. The inky, spicy sparkler overwhelmed this particular roast but, everyone agreed that had it been a different cut, with a layer of crackling, a match would have been certain.
Crowd-pleaser Zinfandel (brought by Wilkin's fellow Australian, Clayton) also raised expectations, but fell down with the food because it was too juicy, and there was not enough acidity to cut through the richness of the meat. However, the Portuguese contender from cult wine-maker Luis Pato had bags of acidity, combined with major fruit action (it uses the Baga grape). "I think Portugal makes the most hugely individual wines in Europe," said Hutchings, who rated this highly, along with his own suggestion from the Médoc.
The Cru Bourgeois from the Médoc split the panel. The Australian contingent failed to get excited about the match - both muttered: "It's a safe bet, I suppose". Leigh, Hutchings and Turner, though, felt it stood up well to the dish. And, as expected, the only Burgundy that was submitted to the tasting was buried under all those flavours.
Good old Chianti Classico (Le Filigare) was nominated as a worthy runner-up (congratulations to Morris & Verdin). Everyone agreed with Wilkin: "Great cedar fruit with good acidity and tightly knitted tannins."
The panel
Caterer drinks editor Fiona Sims was joined by head sommelier Michaela Clayton of Mju restaurant at the Knightsbridge Millennium hotel, London; Ed Hutchings, head sommelier of Brian Turner, Mayfair; Matt Wilkin, consultant sommelier of the Capital Group, London; and chefs Rowley Leigh of Kensington Place, London, and our host, Brian Turner.
The wines
We asked three top suppliers to submit two bottles each, and asked the tasters to bring a bottle each themselves, which made a total of 12 - any more would have been too many. And we got a real cross-section, ranging from a sparkly Australian red to a zippy Austrian Grner Veltliner, with Portugal, Spain, Italy and California all represented - though only two white wines were submitted.
We tasted the wines blind first, assessing their suitability as a potential match, then worked our way through each combination when the dish arrived.
And the winners are…
2001 Dr Unger Grüner Veltliner Alte Reben (Old Vines), Kremstal, Austria (£7.67) Morris & Verdin (020 7921 5300)
2000 Wither Hills Chardonnay, New Zealand (£7.38) Laytons Wine Merchants (020 7288 8860)
Runner-up
2000 Chianti Classico, Le Filigare, Tuscany, Italy (£8.75)
Morris & Verdin
Others tasted
2000 Trinity Oaks Zinfandel, California (Mju restaurant)
1999 Luis Pato Vinha Pan, Portugal (Laymont & Shaw)
2001 Domaine Filliatreau Saumur Champigny Vielles Vignes, Loire (Kensington Place)
1996 Yalumba D Cuvée Black, Australia (Capital Hotel)
2001 Te Kairanga Pinot Noir, Martinborough, New Zealand (Bibendum Wine)
2000 Nicolas Potel Côte de Nuit Villages, Rhône (Bibendum Wine)
2001 Peregrino Vino Tierra de León, Spain (Laymont & Shaw)
1998 Château Tour St Bonnet Cru Bourgeois Médoc, France (Brian Turner, Mayfair)
1999 Trimbach Pinot Noir Reserve, Alsace, France (Mju restaurant)
