Wines to match autumn’s earthy forest foods
Vilarnau Chestnut-Aged Xarel·lo, Penedès, Spain 2018 (£20, ocado.com) Chestnuts are a cheap and moreish autumn-into-winter delight that are all the better (and cheaper) for being one of the few foods I’ve managed to successfully forage. Versatile too: whether they’ve been roasted in a pan or on the proverbial open fire, they can be served simply with a sprinkling of salt, act as a soft, sweetly earthy contrast to brassica bitterness (sprouts or cavolo nero) or complement to umami mushrooms (risotto or pasta), or simmered in milk and herbs and pulped into a paste to go with roast bird or to spread on toast. They also have a long and historic connection with wine, since the wood of the chestnut tree was often favoured by barrel-makers who couldn’t easily get their hands on oak, especially in the Mediterranean. The practice is enjoying something of a revival, and what better wine to sip with the tree’s fruit than a golden, hazy-soft, nuts-and-apricot-scented chestnut barrel-aged dry white from cava county in Penedès in Catalonia?
Extra Special Chilean Pinot Noir, Leyda Valley, Chile 2023 (£8, Asda) Barrel-aged whites using the more conventional vessels made from oak species Quercus alba, Quercus sessilis and Quercus robur are one of my choices to drink with that other much-foraged (although very much not by cowardly, risk-averse me) seasonal food: mushrooms. There’s something about the texture (ample, creamy, silky) and the flavours (which can have a decidedly savoury, almost mushroomy edge) of oak-influenced whites such as the suavely balanced Rustenberg Chardonnay, Stellenbosch, South Africa 2022 (reduced to £12.99 from £15.99 until Tuesday, Waitrose) that goes so well with the comforting creaminess of a mushroom risotto. For reds, meanwhile, the go-to grape is pinot noir, which also has some of the slippery-silky feel and forest-floor earthiness of the fungus. Chile has some of the most convincing budget versions of this tricky-to-grow grape, with Asda’s own-label erring towards light and bright berry compote with just a hint of beetroot in flavour.
M&S Collection Pieronte Barolo 2019 (£20, Marks & Spencer) Now is also the high season of that most luxurious of autumnal forest foods, the truffle, with festivals and menus devoted to the elusive, insanely expensive and pungent white and the more common wrinkly black varieties taking place across northern Italy. Having had some of the most memorable food experiences of my life eating endless variations on the classic dish of tajarin al tartufo made with fresh tajarin pasta (a thinner version of tagliatelle), butter, eggs, and shavings of truffle, over the course of a few days in Piedmont during truffle season, it’s hard for me to conceive of a better match than the local, ethereal red wines made from the nebbiolo variety. Barolo is the most famous of these, and like white truffles, the wines from this denomination don’t come cheap, starting at £20 for the very pretty, floral example at M&S and soon reaching £84 for a bottle of the magnificent Paolo Conterno Barolo Ginestra Monforte d’Alba 2016 (tanners-wine.co.uk).
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