Wednesday, 5 December 2012

Guest Post: A Wine Match for Slow-Roast Citrus Lamb

The Cambridge Wine Blogger kindly agreed to provide a wine recommendation for the slow-roast lamb recipe I recently posted on the Blog. Here's what he came up with... 
 

When the Moving Foodie asked me for another wine recommendation, I had to think a bit initially but eventually came up with such a good idea, I gladly accepted the offer of a guest post to write about it.
 
Matching a wine to
slow-roast whole leg of lamb marinated in orange and lemon juice with cinnamon, fennel seeds and ground cumin served with spicy harissa roast potatoes is no easy task; citrus, red meat and spice is a challenging combination.
 
Plain roast lamb matches well with ripe, primary reds, but red wine's bitter tannins will clash with spices whilst the citrus in the dish needs to be matched with high acidity in the wine.
 
My usual go-to wine for strongly flavoured, restaurant-style dishes is Austrian Riesling; full-bodied in ripe-yet-dry style, it is extremely versatile and food friendly.
 
My current choice for the
Oddbins Bloggers case – a Riesling from Austrian wunderkind Markus Huber - ticks a lot of boxes, but roast lamb needs a bit of bramble or dark berry fruit that you just don't get in a white wine.
 
My next thought was a Pinot Noir - with high acidity and low tannins it also has the fruit element. My
November wine of the month, a Turi Pinot Noir from Bacchanalia, however, is just a little too light and delicate for this dish.
 
I also thought it would be nice to stick with the Mediterranean theme and so I trawled my tasting notes and picked out a red with strong flavours and the right profile to match the food.
 
It's the
Domaine Treloar Motus, made by expat ex-banking software programmer, Jonathan Hesford in Languedoc.
 
Jonathan's story is that he was in NY at the time of the September 11th attacks and whilst he escaped unscathed on the day, he later lost his high-flying job in the subsequent downsizing and, having decided to re-invent himself as a wine-maker, now runs a vineyard in Languedoc with his wife and seasonal help as needed.
 
The wine is made from 95% Mourvèdre, and has a gamey, leathery nose with a complex mix of minty, vanilla spice, garrigue herbs, cherry fruit and minerality with a minty, grippy finish.
 
I don't know how the wine went with the food, but if anyone wants to prepare
the recipe and invite me round, I'll happily bring a couple of bottles of Jonathan's Motus so we can find out.
 
Dom. Treloar Motus 2009 Cotes du Roussillon AOC Rouge: £14.99 from Cambridge Wine Merchants
 
Other related articles
Domaine Treloar


No comments:

Post a comment