Last night I ate dark chocolate while sipping on red wine. I was pretty smug at my success on a wine-pairing well done, and thought my sommelier brother might be proud.
However, my bubble of enthusiasm was soon deflated by the realisation there’s more to red wine than the colour.
That’s when I decided I needed to start taking any wine pairing advice – and my favourite happened to come from Spencer Fondaumiere, manager and sommelier at Burrata.
We introduced you to Buratta a while back – HERE – when we told you about our favourite Biscuit Mill restaurant which happens (for now) to not require a months-long waiting period.
Famed for its flair for the unexpected, Burrata also has a superbly pointed wine list – but that shouldn’t be a surprise when Neil Grant is owner.
When we first introduced the open-plan space to you, we mentioned there’s a healthy range of pastas and mains for both vegetarians and meat eaters – but we left out the fact that the restaurant has a superb selection of risotto dishes, too.
We asked Spencer to give us some advice on how to pair that glass of wine with any of Burrata’s risotto dishes, and he willingly obliged. What he had to say is brilliantly casual, but full of solid wisdom.
If risotto isn’t your vibe don’t stress, much of the advice can be applied as a general rule:
- Pay attention to texture: risotto is often made with delicate flavours, or cooked in light broths. So it’s tempting to pair it with soft, light-bodied wines. However a well-made risotto will always have some crunch and it’s important to find a wine that can stand up to that.
- Enhance those delicate flavours: risottos combine a number of elements in one dish. It’s easy when pairing to ignore more subtle flavours and rather pair with the bold ones. In doing so you can completely bury the little nuances.
- Go with your gut: it is easy to be painted into a corner when pairing wines, red wine with red meat, and so on. Risotto allows one to be bold and to be experimental. Once again it’s because of the different elements at play, you can come up with some real out-of-the-box pairings.
- Try and keep it fresh: generally quite a dense dish, risotto is often cooked with cream or butter. There are of course exceptions; but more often then not that’s the case. So, a wine with good acidity and fresh aromatics is a pretty good foil.
- At Burrata we do a delicious asparagus risotto with goats cheese and truffle oil. It pairs most beautifully with a Fumé blanc (wooded Sauvignon Blanc), a wooded Bordeaux white or if you want to be really adventurous—a wooded Semillon. I would use the Thorne and Daughters Paper Kite if I went the Semillon route or the Fledge and co Fumé blanc. I find the toasted dry spice notes combine well with the earthy truffle oil and the acidity in the wine livens up the creamy risotto, and, of course, the asparagus is a perfect fit for the wine.
Sure it’s not marijuana, but if you can’t remember all that, I am sure Spencer will willingly divulge his knowledge with you when you pop into Burrata for a meal.
After all, their Italian-inspired menu pulls in all the delicious flavours from the traditional side along with an exciting modern twist.
