Pass the Salt

Muchas gracias to Logan Brown and St Vincent’s Cave for a fabulous lunch on Monday. It was a collaborative effort in which chef Shaun Clouston prepared a five-course, degustation lunch using Spanish wine and ingredients from the Auckland-based importer.

It wasn’t about showcasing Spanish dishes; rather, the idea was to enhance local New Zealand produce with a light Spanish touch.

We began with slivers of paprika-cured kingfish sprinkled with crystallised orange. Subtly flavoured and gorgeously textured, the fish was partnered with a chilled Catalonian vermouth. It was the perfect apéritif; I can imagine serving it alongside a dish of the fruity little Arbequina olives from the same region. These were really, really good and I intend buying some from Ontrays, the company’s Wellington stockist.

St Vincent of Zaragoza is the patron saint of wine growers and wine makers, which means he’s probably also keeping a benevolent eye on the business set up by Sophie Cotter. She started importing Spanish wines two years ago having returned to New Zealand after 8 years working in the wine industry in and around Barcelona.

The wines she presented at Logan Brown were all new to me – I know next to nothing about Spanish wine – and all expertly matched with Shaun’s menu. An elegantly dry white from Penedès, near Barcelona had just enough fruit to complement a lightly-smoked bomba rice risotto.

The venison cutlet, with quince paste and cacao jus, met its match in a gorgeous figgy red made from the Monastrell grape. I googled this Mediterranean grape and discovered it’s widely grown in the South East of Spain.  We met it again in a big dessert wine that had so many legs it would have qualified as a centipede. The wine – Olivares Dulce ’08, Monastrell, D.O. Jumilla – was interesting for its surprisingly dry finish and because it’s made from very old ungrafted vines in Jumilla, an area that escaped the phylloxera epidemic of the late 1800s. (see blog post)

This last wine, with bomba rice pudding dessert, nearly finished me off; I stalled at the finalé but picked myself up for a churro con chocolate. I don’t usually like these fried doughy snacks but Shaun’s were feathery crisp and served with a short glass of light chocolate sauce that left me just enough room for a restorative shot of espresso.

Fabuloso.