Banish all thoughts of the working week looming ahead, and indulge in one of those lazy Sunday meals that extend long into the afternoon, or even the evening. Which gives you ample time to enjoy some great wine choices – but what to serve? You won’t go far wrong with any of our 25 top-value recommendations…
While the long lunch may have disappeared from our weekday lives (well, mine at least), there’s nothing like a lingering Sunday get-together with family and friends to round off the weekend.
Wine lovers will no doubt see it as an opportunity to pull out a treasured bottle, but is that the best strategy? Should it be mellow and mature or bright, youthful and fruity? That depends rather less on the central ingredient of the meal than the way you cook it. Take pork, for instance. If you were cooking it Italian style with garlic and herbs you might want an Italian red such as a Chianti, but serve it with crackling and apple sauce, and you might be better off with a Riesling or a Chenin Blanc.
With beef it’s more about the cut and how rare it is. If you were cooking a beef Wellington nicely underdone, for example, I would be inclined to go for a medium-bodied red with some elegance such as a Pomerol, whereas you would want something more robust – a Zinfandel, say, or a gutsy Grenache or GSM blend – with sticky, slow-braised beef or ox cheek and mash.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
If you’re going to showcase a wine, it pays to keep the food simple. A great Bordeaux needs little more than a simple jus, a few garlicky green beans and maybe the indulgence of a gratin dauphinoise. Lamb is perhaps the most forgiving of meats – good news with Easter around the corner – but it will still take you in different directions depending on the way you cook it. Serve a herb-crusted rack of lamb in the spring and it’s a great opportunity to bring out a good red Burgundy. Slow cook a shoulder Middle Eastern style and you could opt instead for a northern Rhône Syrah or a Rioja reserva, while with a more autumnal roast of mutton with root vegetables, older, more gamey reds could come into play – again, I would probably go for the Rhône. But butterfly your lamb and cook it on the barbecue, as many do year-round these days, and I would go for brighter fruit – maybe something vibrant, such as a Mencía.
Chicken, too, adapts to the seasons, though winter or summer you can pair it with a great white. Think of the classic dish with morel mushrooms, which is often paired with a vin jaune – speciality of the Jura region, a part-oxidised dry white Savagnin aged in barrels for more than six years; but perhaps in a less challenging vein, for a family occasion, with a good white Burgund
