Well, there has to be a first for everything – and this was the first sell-out AGM in the Club’s history, it was Susie Barrie MWs first ‘official’ visit to the Club and it was the first visit to a new venue at St Hugh’s College. With good food and wine and lots of discussion at every table as we argued over the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ matches that Susie had set up for us, one member was heard to say ‘it’s a triumph’. Goodness knows what she was referring to but we decided it must be the AGM!

Above: Susie is introduced by outgoing Club Chair and former Club Secretary, Karen Hyde.

Susie’s Food and Wine Matching event started with a round of Nez du Vin aromas – just to get our ‘senses alert’. Sadly, it can’t be said that the Club – collectively - was much good at this! We were better on the jelly beans that were the next salvo in Susie’s assault on our senses. If you held your nose you ‘got’ sweetness but tasted nothing – proving it takes our sense of smell to make sense of taste in all forms.

Susie started by running through the three principles of food and wine matching:

• Match weight for weight (a rich taste will overpower a delicate wine and vice versa)
• Match intensity of flavour
• Complement or match the elements of the wine or food (acidity with acidity works but so too does sweetness with spice).

Then we were off, with the pourers serving us not just single glasses of wine but also a series of food matches – ‘good’ and ‘bad’ – to try with every sip. First up was a glass of the Tesco Finest Bisol Prosecco. We tried it with prosciutto, cantuccini (more usually dipped in vin santo) and duck liver paté on brioche. The salt in the prosciutto was judged to complement perfectly the prosecco’s hint of sweetness. Opinion was divided over the cantuccini – a touch too sweet for the wine perhaps or a clash with the bubbles? The duck liver paté was interesting – not a good match but more for the imbalance in weight than for the flavour itself. It overpowered the wine.

Wine number two was manzanilla – La Gitana. Its distinctive sea salt taste worked like a dream with the salted almonds and olives – less so with Lincolnshire Poacher (sourced like all the other fine cheeses from Peachcroft Farm by Karen Hyde, our outgoing Chairperson). That again was a weight issue, though Susie made the valuable supplementary point that if you’re stuck on matching from the principles above then look for inspiration from matching country or region.   

The 2008 Taste the Difference Sancerre (not such a great year) starred in partnership with the Ticklemore goats’ cheese, the chalkiness of the cheese perfectly balancing the slight stoniness of the wine. Asparagus too went down a treat – belying its reputation as one of the hardest of foods (apart from artichoke) to match. The duck liver again failed to convince – but its turn was to come…

Fourth, we went to a Viré Clessé Vieilles Vignes. The acidity and weight of this oaked chardonnay made it a perfect foil for the smoked salmon but also for the Lincolnshire Poacher. As Susie said, ‘oak and smoke’ works but oak fights with spice – as we discovered when trying onion bhajis and samosas.

Spice needs sweetness, as the Leitz Riesling Kabinett suggested. The spice tends to make wines seem drier. Best match (for most of us) was a raspberry, its acidity and gentle sweetness proving a perfect foil to the wine. The apple tart, cooked specially for us by Hilary Reid Evans, was a wonder in its own right but didn’t wholly convince with the Riesling. It was just a touch too sweet and too weighty for the wine.

Moving on to reds, we tried first the Clocktower Pinot Noir from Marlborough. This scored heavily with the game terrine, though there was disagreement about the impact of adding chutney to the terrine – for some it made the pinot seem fuller, for others it was a touch too acid. The Jersey Shield (a new cheese from the makers of Montgomery) definitely did not work – its creaminess completely flattened the wine – and most of us were unconvinced by the combination of falafels and pinot. Rare roast beef (thanks to Sarah for sourcing, cooking and slicing and to Hans for rolling!) was a treat with the pinot.

The beef scored even better when matched with Berry’s Good Ordinary Claret. Protein and tannins go well together – combining in the mouth and leaving a sense of refreshment. However, the horseradish (for most of us) was too acid and the bhajis and samosas too spicy (as Susie had forecast). The Colston Bassett stilton (another wonderful piece of cheese) failed to convince most of the Club members of its suitability – though there were some strong dissenters who liked the match of weight in the mouth.

Lastly came a Royal Tokaji 5 Puttonyos. Now the apple pie came into its own – a sublime pairing with weight and sweetness in perfect balance. The duck liver too worked well. In fact Tokaji’s combination of sweetness, weight and acidity made it able to complement many of the foods that we tried.

The tasting was considered a great success – thanks of course to Susie, who more than lived up to her recent award  as IWSC’s Communicator of the Year – but also to the committee members (and others) who put so much time and effort into sourcing, preparing, plating and serving such a range of goodies. We also owe thanks to the Gatineau patisserie in Summertown who baked the brioche specially for us at just a few hours’ notice. Last, but not least, thanks must go to Brendan Cull, our newly elected Vice Chair, whose organisational skills kept all the volunteers on the straight and narrow.