Gamey wines for game. If the sight of one more skimpy summer salad is driving you demented, try tucking into the new season’s game with gusto. Be it feathered or furred, putting effort into selecting the most suitable wines for your favourite game dishes pays off.
Sadly, white wines are a no-no with game. I even find the German habit of serving a late-harvest riesling with goose or duck is too liverish for my liking. Red wines work best, but think about the intensity of flavour. Is your game a mild bird like supermarket-sourced guinea fowl? Or have you bought your game bird direct from a shoot and hung it well yourself? Game flavour starts with guinea fowl, not that much stronger than chicken, with quail and rabbit a notch stronger, followed by goose and duck. Grouse and pheasant are on the next rung, with venison and hare the strongest game of all.
It’s not just the game that dictates your choice of wine, but the sauces and stuffings accompanying it. Dish up a punchy kumquat, ginger and cinnamon jam to serve with duck or a blackberry, juniper and cracked-pepper sauce with goose, and you will need a much more full-bodied red than if you had simply roasted these birds. If you have a very fine, old bottle of red burgundy, or fully mature red rhône, you will be better off with a mild game meat like guinea fowl, or young, unadorned grouse that has just come into season. As with all good wine and food pairings, the best melt-in-the-mouth matches are made by those who spend as much on the wine per head as they do on the food. No point at all in splashing out on an expensive venison fillet if you are going to partner it with a £3.99 rhône.
Red burgundy makes the best marriage with game, as its rich, truffley, spicy, leaf-mould flavours echo those of the meat. Good red burgundy is pricey but worth it, and if you have yet to taste a great bottle, it’s high time you tried the superb, ripe, 2002 Savigny ler Cru La Bataillère aux Vergelesses from Albert Morot (Majestic Wine, £16.99), whose zesty, cherry fruit on the finish would neatly fit the bill with duck or goose, partnered by a cherry sauce. A tad cheaper at Morrisons is the roses and Marmite-scented 2002 Gevrey-Chambertin Le Meurger, £14.99, good with medium-strength grouse and coq au vin. More mature grouse and pheasant served with all the trimmings need a bigger, bolder red burgundy, so try Morrisons 2004 Labouré-Roi Nuits-Saint-Georges with its fine, fat, leafy spice for £15.99. Venison and, at a pinch, hare cry out for a chunky Aussie shiraz, and the elegant, ripe 2003 Kangarilla Road Shiraz (Majestic, £9.99) is a good buy. At the other end of the spectrum, a tasty rhône red to serve with guinea fowl or quail is the 2003 Crozes-Hermitage from the Tain-l’Hermitage co-operative, a £6.99 savoury, peppery snip at Sainsbury’s.
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Game it is, then.
jane.macquitty@thetimes.co.uk