| Flaming good wine |
| by Paula Goddard | ||||||
| Saturday, 11 August 2007 | ||||||
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Red wines made with the red-berry tasting grape varieties of Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Tempranillo work best with barbecued meats. The blackberry and cherry flavours in Italian and Spanish blends of these grapes have enough strength to keep up with oily marinades and crispy cooking.
Fruity tasting wines don’t happen by accident. Where grapes grow will affect a wines flavour. Warm southern Mediterranean countries tend to produce fruity wines and these typically have an alcoholic content of around 12.5 per cent. This level of alcohol gives the wine enough mouth-cleansing body without being overwhelmingly alcoholic. American and Australian wines can measure a massive 14.5 per cent. Such high levels of alcohol leave a wine sickly-sweet and so intensely flavoured that it overpowers any food it meets. Not all southern-hemisphere wines contain so much alcohol. The Californian Gallo wines are typically a more manageable 10%. Read the small print on the wine bottle’s label before buying to be sure you don’t get more than you want. But where are we white wine drinkers in this mass of red? The lighter flavours of white wines go well with barbecued fish, chicken, vegetable kebabs and salads. These foods will often have picked up the barbecue’s smokiness and so need wines made with highly-flavoured white grape varieties for a better match. Gooseberry tasting Sauvignon Blanc and the honey tones of a Colombard go well. White wines taste best served chilled and drinking these should help cool you down a bit. Mind you, keeping white wines cold while the sun shines and the barbecue radiates heat is tricky, but not insoluble. For a quick and cheap solution, wrap your bottles in newspaper soaked in water. As the water evaporates it takes the heat away, keeping your wine cool for about half an hour. For a longer lasting solution, stand your white wines in a mixture of water and icecubes. But, you may find that this water bath becomes a magnet for rubbish and empty wine bottles. If your barbecue is still glowing after everything has been eaten, don’t be in a rush to go inside. My suggestion is to ignore the aftermath and sit and look over the rim of a wine glass into the white coals instead. PG’s Tips
Waitrose Prado Tempranillo Cabernet Sauvignon 2006, Spain. £14.99 3-litre box (equivalent to £3.75 a bottle) Four bottles worth of smooth blackcurrant tasting red wine are ready to be served from this bag-in-a-box. If you don’t drink it all on the day, don’t worry as the wine will stay fresh for another 6 weeks. A great value wine that will match spicy marinades. Co-op, Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Somerfield Da Luca Primitivo Merlot, Tarantino, Italy. £4.99 Black cherry flavoured Merlot mixes well with the dark chocolate flavours of Italy’s indigenous grape Primitivo. Juicy, fruity, fab. July BBQ Reds Dozen. £75.00 Three bottles each of Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah and Merlot blends from Chile, Lebanon, AustraliaFrance. Their soft blackberry and plum flavours will cope with anything from salads to burnt barbecued meats. and Co-op, Morrisons, Londis Kumala Sauvignon Blanc Colombard, Western Cape, South Africa. £5.49 This blend of two white grape varieties won’t overpower the salad. And its pear and melon flavours are strong enough to cope with lightly barbecued meats. Sainsbury’s Mouton Cadet Sauvignon Blanc 2006, Baron Philippe de Rothschild, Bordeaux, France. £6.99 You’ll gradually taste the gooseberry and lime flavours in this classily-labelled wine. Choose a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc if you prefer an immediate gooseberry rush. For a quick meal solution try: Free delivery on barbecue packs of safari burgers and sausages: kangaroo, bison, crocodile and chicken burgers; springbok, ostrich and brandy, and wild boar apple and calvados sausages. £30 for enough meat for four people, £55 for eight people. Street Food, Tom Kine. £14.99 This book contains recipes of street-vendor snacks, the Menus section collates these into themes. Try the Barbecue Menu lamb chops basted in lemon butter, nutmeg, ginger, cardamom, and cloves; grilled artichokes, and grilled haloumi cheese marinated with oregano. This first appeared on Drink Up... With Paula Goddard on livingit.com
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Barbecues and subtle, delicate wines do not go together. To compete with the rich smells and flavours of barbecued food you need a wine with dark fruit and chocolate notes, so forget about whites and rosés – think instead of robustly-flavoured reds.
The typical slightly-burnt barbecued burger often comes topped with a fiery chilli-tomato relish. You’d think drinking a cold beer or chilled white wine with this would help soothe the tongue of excess chilli, but actually a room-temperature red wine is a better bet: your tongue feels cleansed enough for your taste buds to start registering again. Your burger will taste meaty and your red wine fruity.
