Fish and Pinotage

A decade or so ago when I was judging at the Veritas awards, one evening I went with a large group of  judges for dinner to Cape Town Fish Market restaurant in Stellenbosch.  With us went two boxes of opened wines, left overs from the day's judging panels.

It was a pleasure to at last swallow wine instead of spitting, and to see the label so we knew what was in our glass.

I had Cob, a fish new to me, simply pan fried. It was a delicate, sweet white fleshed. I sampled many of the two dozen wines we'd brought. But the one I returned to and settled on was the delicious Wellington Wines 'La Cave' Pinotage. Red wine and white fish and it made a perfect fit.

I was reminded of that epiphany by Emile Joubert's report on his visit to Miller's Thumb fish restaurant in Cape Town intent on pairing L’Avenir 'Grand Vin' Pinotage 2006 with grilled marlin:

"I was already salivating at the thought of the perfumed red elixir chasing the oily, robustly flavoured morsels of marlin.

Game-fish and Pinotage are the perfect match. Just as Ernest Hemingway is inseparable from short sentences, boxing gloves and serial marrying, so a steak of marlin finds its match with Pinotage.

The L’Avenir must be one of the finest examples around, the velvety, red-fruit notes and the mouth-loving texture making the fish swim again, this time through a sea of gorgeously graceful wine flavours."

Click here to read Emile's article 'The Old Miller and the Marlin'.