Each week, 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, ‘Blow the Bank’ brings you a simple Chicken Liver Salad to see us through the summer.

Like other forms of offal, chicken livers languish on supermarket shelves largely ignored by soccer moms and dads doing the weekly shop and chosen only by the frugal pensioner and the odd foodie. (After all, we can’t eat at St. John’s every night or drag ourselves to Smithfield’s each morning.)

It’s a shame too, really; because far more than most any other offal, chicken livers are both delectable and versatile. Consider this: in the past four years, I’ve managed to have chicken livers on lemongrass skewers in a restaurant on the Kowloon peninsula of Hong Kong, in pasta at a little Italian eatery hidden on the first floor of a rather non-descript Melbourne side street, as chopped liver served al fresco at a kosher trattoria in the Jewish quarter of Rome, and with salad in a Spanish tapas bar in London’s Piccadilly Circus.

While my favourite method of preparation would most certainly fresh from the pan with a touch of salt and gently fried in olive oil, they are remarkably good served with a slice of orange or Mandarin and few choice leaves of salad, making them perfect for a light summer luncheon.

Most often, people will recommend pairing liver with a big tannic red wine, the tannins serving as a safe partner for the savour flavour of the offal; however, an occasionally considered alternative — especially in the case of foie gras — is Sauternes, a sweet and acidic French dessert wine made of botrytised white wine grapes.

As with the French Sauternes, the Hungarian Tokaji Aszú is another well known wine made of botrytised wine grapes occasionally matched with foie gras to excellent affect. Given Hungary’s culinary acuity when it comes to all things liver (many consider the country’s foie gras among the best in the world — even France imports it), I decided to pair the Simple Chicken Liver Summer Salad with its dry Tokaji Furmint cousin, hoping that the drier wine would better suit the flavours chicken livers and salad.

Although, not quite the perfect match that I had hoped, but still a very good one all the same, the 2004 Oremus Tokaji Mandolas Dry Furmint (13%), £13.50 from Planet of the Grapes, is honeyed and buttery with an strong citric edge and a bit too much of an oak-y aftertaste that clashes slightly with the strongly textured flavour of the liver. This is a very impressive wine, nonetheless, and a rarity to find most places outside of Hungary to boot. Those seeking a white wine outside the realm of the overfamiliar Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc could do a lot worse than this. It would pair nicely with soft, flakey fish and seafood or make an excellent wine to enjoy on its own. It also maintains its form once openned, its oak-y aftertaste only marginally increasing over a few days.

Now, because InterWined is sometimes asked to ascribe numerical value to the wines it tries like judges at a sporting competition, let’s give this one some sort of score that suggests an excellent near miss, close the bullseye — something like 8.whatever.

(For more on InterWined’s complex ratings system, be sure to visit the Ratings page.)

InterWined’s Own Recipe in Full

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InterWined tried a bit more Tannat wine recently at Planet of the Grapes in Leadenhall market. At £7 a glass, the 2004 Bouza ‘Las Violetas’ Tannat from Uruguay does actually have a touch of violet in the wine. We actually didn’t notice the connection to the name until writing the review.
Pretty on the ball, we […]

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Whether it be a bottle of champagne served in celebration or a simple glass of table wine poured to help end a miserably long day, InterWined.com believes in the power of wine to mark each and every occasion as unique. It’s just one of ways that we find life and wine intertwine.
So, when Joel of […]

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For the theme of January’s Wine Blogging Wednesday, the hosts Jack and Joanne of Fork & Bottle chose the white wines of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
Running along the Austrian/Slovenian border in northern Italy, the region is renowned for the high calibre of its white wines; but, perhaps, in the UK it is best known as the birthplace […]

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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

Click on the post to view and download the recipe

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‘InterWined In Conversation’

In Conversation with Planet of the Grapes

This week, InterWined.com brings you a special one-off interview with Matt Harris of the hugely likeable, always interesting, Planet of the Grapes wine sellers in London.

Click the title to view the full interview.

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The christmas press party at Moody’s Investors Service was held last night in the upper walkways of Tower Bridge, high above the Thames. PR guy Daniel told InterWined that the place gave the ratings agency a good deal on the evening’s rental, £15,000 for three hours.
You think the Tower could serve decent food for that […]

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It’s a Chianti! It’s a Sangiovese!
No, it’s a Super Super Tuscan!
A super Tuscan is any wine from around Tuscany Italy that “breaks” the rules.
In this case, the 2000 Le Fioraie “Piemaggio”, has some Cabernet Sauvignon (wah?) and Merlot (gasp!) blended into the mix. Not being 100 percent Sangiovese grape means it can’t call itself a […]

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Every Friday, InterWined.com pairs one great wine that exceeds its normal £10 ($20) threshold with one great meal, prepared following the instructions of some the Internet’s best food blogs.

This week’s ‘Blow the Bank’ comes courtesy of Haalo at Cook (Almost) Anything At Least Once and a rich and flavourful Eggplant (Aubergine) Involtini with Ricotta, Mozzarella and Tomato.

Vegetarian food is regularly overlooked by head chefs and, in turn, often ignored by most diners. As a result, it is usually underserved by sommeliers who limit their pairings to a few simple dictums: mushrooms are like meat and deserve a full-bodied red wine such as Chateauneuf du Pape; Chardonnay goes well with quiche (it is chicken, after all – see Pear & Sage-stuffed Chicken with Hazelnut Crust for more); and, when in doubt, serve Sauvignon Blanc.

All three are reasonable, as, indeed, Sauvignon Blanc pairs excellently well with many vegetable dishes including asparagus, but each belies the complexity and nuance one finds in vegetarian cuisine.

As with the mushroom, one could class the aubergine or eggplant as a meaty vegetable. Equally one could place the aubergine alongside the courgette or zucchini in terms of its cucumber-like texture. (Perhaps strange, the aubergine is actually from the same genus as the tomato and potato.) While Chateauneuf du Pape can easily compliment the meatiness of mushroom, it would likely overpower the softer courgette (zucchini).

So what wine grapes pairs well with aubergine? Something red, to be sure; but, where others would possibly recommend a Merlot or Cabernet Sauvignon, InterWined would suggest finding a red with softer tannins such as those found in the Gamay Noir à Jus Blanc.

Served chilled as an aperitif or opened only when plating, the 2006 Te Mata Woodthorpe Gamay Noir from New Zealand, £11 from Planet of the Grapes is an excellent partner to Haalo’s Eggplant Involtini with Ricotta, Mozzarella and Tomato. It easily compliments the softness of the grilled aubergine while proving a perfect partner to enhance the kick found in Haalo’s secret ingredient, wine vinegar-soaked currants.

The Te Mata Gamay Noir is black currant juice drink or even black cherry in colour. Fragrant, refreshing, and smooth on the palette; it bears all the signature features of an outstanding Beaujolais. In fact, since the Te Mata Woodthrope Gamay Noir seems unavailable outside of the UK and New Zealand, InterWined recommends another Beaujolais wine, the Fleurie; or, better still, try one of North America’s Gamay Noirs, such as the ones made by Andrew Lane in Napa, California.

Haalo’s Recipe in Full

Eggplant Involtini with Ricotta, Mozzarella and Tomato

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Often cited, somewhat patronisingly, by wine critics as a starter grape for people beginning to enjoy wine, Alsatian, Australian, and New Zealand varieties Gewürztraminer’s traditional aromatic bouquets of lychee, rose petals, and Turkish Delight would seem to make it a poor introductory grape when compared to a crisper, lighter alternative. Rather, it is Italian variety from where the traminer grape takes its name with its more subtle aromatics that would better suit the newcomer. (The direct translation of Gewürztraminer is spicy traminer.)

Take for example the 2005 Alois Lageder Single Vineyard Gewürztraminer, £12 from Planet of the Grapes ($12 US according to Wine Spectator). In recent years, Alois Lageder, situated in Bolzano part of the German/Italian-speaking region of northern Italy known as both Alto Adige and Südtirol and until 1919 part of Austria, has worked to make its operation more environmentally sound using renewable energy sources and vinification tower that purportedly uses gravity to help transform the grape.

As for the wine, its low-alcohol content of 12.5% makes it the perfect aperitif: light colour and finish, met with a slightly floral nose of subtle lychee fruits. It would also very well with a nice summer pasta (no red sauce) or a mildly-spiced, light summer curry or stir-fry.

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