Given that most wine is loosely described as fruity, it might seem irrelevant to talk about which one works especially well with fruit. But think about it for a moment: for a start, no two fruits are the same, so a wine that tastes appley or citrussy (riesling, say) is a very different beast from one that tastes of plums (malbec or merlot, for example).
There’s also the difference between savoury and sweet. A savoury dish such as burrata with peaches will obviously call for a different wine than a peach cobbler or tart. And when you’re choosing a wine for sweet dishes, it’s more about handling the level of sweetness than mimicking the fruit flavour. In fact, you might even want a contrast – with spaghetti al limone, for instance, a light red such as valpolicella, frappato or the freisa d’Asti in today’s pick would work better than a lemony wine such as a sauvignon blanc. Lemon tart, meanwhile, is more about dealing with its exquisite sharpness, so a super-sweet ice wine will usually do the trick there.
It also depends how much fruit there is in a recipe. A few pomegranate seeds or a dollop of redcurrant jelly won’t determine what you drink with your roast lamb, but it might steer you to a slightly lighter wine – a burgundy, say, rather than a bordeaux.
Does that make things unnecessarily complicated? Not if you enjoy being in the kitchen and are intrigued by the art of flavour combining (if you do, check out Niki Segnit’s brilliant new book, The Flavour Thesaurus: More Flavours). If an ingredient goes with a particular kind of fruit, a wine of a similar fruit character should work with it, too. Pork and apple? You’ll find the latter in riesling, as mentioned above, but also in chenin blanc. Ham and pineapple? Who eats that these days? But if you do, you may be pleasantly surprised how well a semillon works with a gammon steak. Think of the combination of chocolate and cherries – or raspberries, for that matter – and you can see why a sweet red such as the Brachetto d’Acqui in my pick this week might be better than a sauternes or similar sweet white (though the latter is perfect with a classic French fruit tart).
Weirdly, very few wines actually taste of grapes, and some are not what you’d describe as fruity at all: dry whites such as pinot grigio and albariño, which I wrote about last week, for example, and older reds such as gran reserva riojas, where the primary, fresh fruit flavours have faded enticingly to dried fruit such as fig and prune. But that’s a whole other story.
Four wines to drink with fruity food
Paul Mas Rosorange 2022 £11.75 (on offer until 20 August, down from £12.50) Vintage Roots, £13.75 Grape & Grind, Bristol, 12.5%. An ingenious mashup of rosé and orange wine that’s fruitier than a Provence rosé. Would be great with peach and burrata salad, or pissaladière.
Venturina Freisa d’Asti 2022 £9.99 Waitrose, 12.5%. A gorgeous summer pudding of a red. Chill to 16-18C and drink with brie or a feta and watermelon salad.
Domaine Begude “Le Paradis” Viognier 2022 £16.99 Majestic (or £14.99 on “mix six”), 13.5%. The best viognier tastes, lusciously, of apricot, so it’s good with sweet/savoury dishes such as chicken with roast peaches, pork with apricots, or a tagine.
Braida Brachetto d’Acqui £14.95 Tanners, 5.5%. Delicious, sweet, frothy, low-alcohol red that’s brilliant with white or milk chocolate desserts, and Eton mess.
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For more wine pairings, go to Fiona’s website, matchingfoodandwine.com
"fruit" - Google News
August 18, 2023 at 08:00PM
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What wine goes with fruit? - The Guardian
"fruit" - Google News
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