Food & Albariño

Albariño - great with octopus (but perhaps not the blue-ringed variety!)

Before I start I should mention that there is a page covering gastronomy on our main website, but I thought that with the summer looming, and foreign holidays booked, now would be a good time to write a little about food and wine.

The first thing to remember about matching food and wine is to forget any hard and fast rules. Forget about complicated systems for selecting the right wine to enhance the food on the table. This is not rocket science. It's common sense.

Some of today's food-and-wine advisers might suggest that mediocre wines can be improved by serving them with the right food - not true (albeit that drinking a poor wine with a chicken vindaloo might prove me wrong!) So, the first rule is to pick a good wine - and this is where common sense part comes in..... The old rule about white wine with fish and red wine with meat made perfect sense in the days when white wines were nearly always light and fruity and red wines were heavy and tannic, but today this does not always apply. And furthermore, you have to take into account the way in which your meal is prepared - for example, is it served with a cream sauce, does it have citrus flavours or is it heavily spiced?

In the case of Albariño the most obvious matches, for this clean, refreshing white grape are the local specialities of Galicia - fresh fish and seafood (best served with the minimum culinary intervention). Surprisingly, it may also be recommended with less obvious foods such as goat's cheese, and it works well with most white meats, again depending on how they are prepared. Oriental food is also worth exploring with Albariño, especially Japanese and many Dim-Sum Chinese dishes - but do take care with Thai food as many dishes might prove to be a little too spicy.

I think that perhaps in the future I may include some specific recipes, all of which will be tried and tested at home. So, as they say, watch this space....