Italian Wine Dinner at Martin Wishart’s

This dinner was hosted on Monday 27.09 at one of Edinburgh’s one (aspiring to two) Michelin-starred restaurants, Martin Wishart. Zubair of Raeburn Fine Wines supplied and introduced the wines, and it was these, and not the food, which really drove a fascinating evening. The restaurant sometimes seemed to be struggling with the number of covers all getting the same dish at the same time, and the re-pours of the wines for some diners seemed frankly arbitrary (which is to say, I never got any). The service at some of the finer restaurants can seem trapped between the Scylla of stilted formality and Charybdis of false bonhomie, but at least at Martin Wishart the formality is unobtrusive and the bonhomie not too forced. 

Prosecco di Valdobbiadine, Casa Coste Piane, Santo Stefano

Prosecco is Italy’s answer to cava, a light, simple sparkling wine, made in the Veneto. This rather cloudy prosecco is superior by prosecco standards – there is a touch of champagne breadiness to the bouquet and, as it opens out, a gently buttery note joins the green fruit. It is very dry for a kind of wine I would more usually associate with slack sweetness. The cloudiness comes about as it is fermented in bottle and left on its lees. Coming from 100 year-old vines, it must be one of the more distinguished expressions of prosecco available – however, at £11.99 a bottle, it’s not much more expensive than rather more ordinary prosecco.   

The prosecco was accompanying the amuse bouches. For once, I can thank my allergy to crustaceans; instead of crab marie rose, I was given a beetroot macaroon with horseradish in the middle; it looked like a tiny purple hamburger, and was quite lovely. There was also a little slab of pastry, cheese and olive (gruyere en croûte) and a delicious, gooey, tiny deep-fried slab of pig’s trotter on toast.

2003 Solea DOC, Azienda Agricola Roagna, Barolo, Piedmont

This is a wine that confused me – white Barolo. It was the unusual deep orange, almost rosé hue that first alerted me that something strange was up. Although Barolo is a village and not a grape variety, I’d always understood that it only produced red wines from the Nebbiolo grape variety. That turns out to be half right; this wine is made from 80% Blanc de Nebbiolo, that is, the juice of the grapes but not the skins, where the colour and tannins reside, and 20% Chardonnay. The nose is also very unusual. It starts off without any obvious fruit quality, instead reminding me of liqourice and corn flakes. Nor is there any oak taste per se, although it does have a texture I associate with oak-aged wines. It turns out to have spent an amazing five years in oak barrels, hence the deep colour; however, all old barrels, hence the lack of oak flavour. What is most surprising of all is the way it develops, covering a much further distance than most wines do over an evening; it becomes gravelly and dusty (that oak again) and with time, develops an orange note that reminds me intensely of Puligny-Montrachet. By the end of the evening, it tastes like I have a glass of white Burgundy. 

The Roagna was set against smoked Shetland salmon. Wishart’s smoke their own salmon, and I have to admit it was extremely good. It came with a fine foam of konbu vinegar supplying an idiosyncratically Japanese taste, and a sweet and vinegary soused pickle, which was frankly too strong both for the salmon and the wine. 

2009 Contadino Rosso IGT, Frank Cornelissen, Solicchiata, Etna

Turkish Delight in a compost heap, cloves in rotten fruit? On a slightly more prosaic note, cherries are the most accurate fruit comparison to the bouquet, but this fine wine offers up some intriguing notes. Sicily is said to be home to some of Italy’s most extraordinary wines, and this is certainly unusual. Coming from vineyards that never had to be re-grafted as a defence against phylloxera (the bug never quite made it to this very arid area), it is made from old vines of obscure local varieties, most importantly Nerello Mascalese. I find it remarkable that such a young wine can taste so like a well-aged one. It has been produced according to strict organic principles, and I suppose the lack of oak aging probably allows it seem smoothly older than it is. The palate is as unusual as the bouquet, and we come up with cabbage toothpaste and a passing note of rosewater. Letting it hang around in the glass for a while, it passes through a Darjeeling tea phase, then a powerful note of lead pencil, and ends up reminding me of black pepper in balsamic vinegar, which we like on strawberries. I was fascinated by this wine, though D.L. thought it was well-made but simple, and L.S. (among others in the room, I think) found it downright distasteful.

I was enjoying the wine so much I paid less attention than I might have to the roast monkfish and red wine risotto accompanying it (at this dinner, the food accompanied the wine, not vice versa). Still, it went well enough, monkfish being a stronger white fish, and the wine being light for a red. The risotto was very tasty, although a little underdone.

1998 Barolo Brunate, Poderi Marcarini, La Morra, Piedmont

Rather more classic wine territory now, provoking sighs of relief from some people. What I found really striking was the move from a very young wine that seemed already aged to perfection to a much older wine that still feels young, and which I would want to cellar rather than drink now. It comes from one of the “Grand Cru” terroirs of Barolo, Brunate, and it is a powerful, structured wine. It is fleshy, fruity (dark fruits), creamy and tannic, smelling of tar and violets, with two years of oak aging that show though. The fact that it doesn’t go through a gamut of transformations over the evening as the previous wine did underlines the fact that it probably isn’t at its best yet.

Barolo hits at much the same sort of food area as red Burgundy, and this went perfectly with the roast (but quite rare) grouse.

2005 “Ka!” Passito IGT, Viticoltori de Conciliis, Prignano Cilento, Campania

Chocolate, vanilla, and walnut dessert whip were all tasting notes I toyed with for this sweet wine until, along I think with the whole table, settling on salted caramel. Most unusually for a sweet wine, it seemed to have virtually no fruit character at all, but eventually I found a little lychee in with the chocolate sauce. Lovely, in any case, not too sweet, with a good measure of acid to balance against the sugar. It’s made from classis sweet grapes, a blend of Moscato (Italian Muscat) and Malvasia. You wouldn’t want it beside a slab of chocolate ice cream, but it’s ideal with the pastry dish Wishart’s have for us.

Dessert is tarte aux pomme with a glob of caramel ice cream. The tarte seems just a little tired, as the pastry was clearly made earlier, although as D.L. remarked, it’s all a question of perspective; if it turned up at his canteen at work, he would certainly go for seconds. 

The petit fours that come with coffee are fun. There is a delicious rubbery lemon bubble that bursts in the mouth releasing lemon cream. We first encountered these sort of bubbles two years ago in Spain at Arzak (black olive filled with olive liquid) and, even better, Martín Berasategui (squid filled with squid ink – how they managed to seal up the squid ball I don’t know). Then there’s a capuchin hat of biscuit, black chocolate and white chocolate, a boiled sweet that is clearly made out of strawberry jam, and a chocolate and pistachio macaroon that once again looks like a tiny hamburger. It’s these sorts of culinary odds and ends, not the main courses, where restaurants really get to show off their creativity, which is why tasting menus can work so well.