Each Friday Most Fridays and some others given the circumstances, InterWined.com pairs one great wine with one great meal and publishes the results along with the recipe in a little feature it likes to call ‘Blow the Bank’.

This week it’s InterWined’s Own Chunky Tomato Soup — just the sort of dish to enjoy with loads of freshly baked bread and good bottle of wine on a late autumn evening when you and the sun in the sky have decided to call it a day by four in the afternoon.

For many people, wine is in an ingredient and never an accompaniment to well-prepared soup. After all, what’s the point of pairing a liquid with a liquid? But it needn’t be so galling.

In fact, it’s quite traditional to serve a sherry or fortified wine with a consommé or bisque. The flavours of the two balancing each other to great affect. What’s perhaps slightly less traditional is serving a fuller white or red wine with soup. But, given the features of InterWined’s Own Chunky Tomato Soup a fuller wine should work wonders, and does do in the form of a 2006 Txomin Etxaniz Getariako Txakolina, just outside of San Sebastian in the Basque Country of northern Spain, and bought from Planet of the Grapes for around £11.

In the wine world, there are few better partners to the tomato that the simple green wines of the Iberian Peninsula. And while, most wine lovers are well-versed in the Portuguese Vihno Verde, fewer are familiar with its Basque cousin, Txakoli, made from the grapes Hondarribi Zuri and Hondarrabi Beltza, or its most famous representative the humble Txomin Etxaniz.

For those not blessed with a knack for the Basque tongue, Euskara, Txomin Etxaniz looks virtually unpronounceable. And, as a wine, one assumes is more often ordered with an index finger placed on a menu than a tongue pressed against the soft palate of the mouth. In actual fact, it’s quite an easy name to say: It’s Shomin Eshaniz or Shomin Eshanith. But, for simplicity’s sake, we’ll call him Dominic or Domy for short.

And the 2006 Domy is a perfect partner for Chunky Tomato Soup. At 11% alcohol, it’s both light and nimble. Its green-y acidity and fresh zip give a nice kick to the tomatoes and make the entire experience utterly morish: 9.6. This is another superb example of a simple, low yield, table wine that beats the big boys in terms of sheer drinking pleasure again and again.

InterWined’s Own Recipe In Full

Chunky Tomato Soup

Ingredients:
Variety of tomatoes (plum tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, pomodorino), 20 or so in total
7 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped
1 red onion, chopped
½ bottle of white or red wine
1-2 Knobs of unsalted butter
Olive oil
Coriander (Cilantro) to garnish
Spanish paprika
Cracked black pepper
Toasted slices of bread (rosemary and olive breads are particularly good)
Balsamic vinegar to dress
Rosemary or garlic oil to dress

1. Chop the tomatoes into quarters (peel them for a smoother soup) and set aside
2. Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan on a high heat, before reducing the heat to medium and adding the a knob or two of unsalted butter
3. Add the chopped garlic and onions and cook until the onions begin to turn translucent (Don’t let the butter or garlic burn)
4. Add the tomatoes, paprika, and pepper; and stir in the ½ bottle of wine
5. Cover and cook for approximately 15-20 minutes on a medium-low heat
6. Once the wine has reduced by at least half and the tomatoes are soft and mushy, remove the saucepan from the heat and ladle in to a blender or food processor
7. Blitz the mixture in the blender or food processor until smooth
9. Return the soup to the saucepan and cook gently for 1-3 minutes more, stirring continuously
10. Ladle the soup into bowls and cover with a garnish of coriander
11. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and rosemary or garlic oil, before serving with toasted bread

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