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HESTON BLUMENTHAL LOVES HIS SHERRY

Sherry is not just your aunt's tipple of choice, says Heston Blumenthal, uber-chef and molecular gastronomist. At a sherry-pairing event in London, he talks to Tom Harrow, our online wine expert, about what makes it so special ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

The Fat Duck in Bray is renowned for crafting sublime meals from bizarre incredients. "To eat there is to witness something that is part theatre of the absurd and part chemistry lesson," wrote Tim Atkin in his wine column for the summer issue of Intelligent Life magazine. Heston Blumenthal, the master chef at the Michelin three-star restaurant, is known for being an iconoclast. He works on on a molecular level, collaborating with scientists to create his experimental, ovation-ready menus (bacon-and-egg ice cream, anyone?). The Fat Duck has been voted Britain's top restaurant for the last three years, owing to his cerebral concoctions.

What does one drink with such complicated food? Sherry, says Blumenthal. At an event in London, he talks to Tom Harrow about what makes the drink so unusual, and why it is the perfect complement to some of the trickiest ingredients (artichokes, turtle).

MIL: My first sherry epiphany occurred after Big John Radford [a larger-than-life wine writer/lecturer and bon vivant; the Falstaff of his era]  exhorted his diploma students to try a Dry Old Oloroso with their Sunday Roast Beef. It was a revelation--if painful on Monday. When did you first start considering sherry in a non-traditional sense?

Heston Blumenthal: In my early to mid-20s, at an independent merchant in Oxfordshire, where I also made my first and probably only great wine investment--a case of 1989 Chateau Le Pin for £330 [which now trades at $1,500 per bottle]. Here I first tried a single Almacenista Amontillado [an aged dry Sherry from a single, small grower, bottled by a bigger Bodega] from Lustau, and realised sherry was something other than your aunt's tipple of choice, served in dodgy schooners at Christmas.

MIL: What was the impetus for the sherry and food molecular-pairing project?

HB: This is our fourth year working with the Sherry Institute. Previously we have seen sherry more as a catalyst for social interaction--a drink to accompany simple tapas. But I had felt for a while there is something in sherry that other wines just didn't have, and wanted to explore further. I was interested in looking at its acidity, as sherry has an unusual feeling in the mouth, an effect I had a hunch strongly indicated the presence of umami.

We had previously co-written a paper with Reading University on umami in tomatoes and found that the gel and seeds and pulp--the parts in traditional French cooking that get binned, have the highest umami content. So we sent a load of sherries off for testing using the tomato model and the results came back. No umami. I was convinced there was something we were missing so we persevered in testing and just a few months ago we had a breakthrough: we found these compounds--diketopiperazines (DKPs), we think created by yeast activity during the secondary fermentation, which actively and uniquely enhance the flavour of umami-rich foods.

Flavour is this combination of aroma and taste (or volatiles and non-volatiles), the former experienced in the head, the latter in the mouth. Whereas as traditional wine pairing is achieved by aromatic comparison, sherry is unique among wines in that the presence of DKPs allows you to pair with foods on the level of taste and mouthfeel, giving an extra dimension of sensuous pleasure. This is groundbreaking.

MIL: Can you take us through the process of matching certain sherries with specific food pairings?

HB: We had a two-prong approach to creating the pairings--firstly taking umami-rich foods such as Gruyere and oily fish like mackerel and also crab which are high in ribonucleotides and pairing them on paper with the dry sherries that had corresponding DKPs. We employed another technique which nobody has ever attempted with a wine before--reducing it to its aromatic constituents and matching the distinctive compounds with those same present in other foods.

I had done this previously when creating ingredient pairings for dishes (a memorable and surprising success was caviar and white chocolate) but never before involving wine as a component of the flavour experience. For example, we found a compound in Amontillado that has this peach character, although it's not really present among the aromatics. We tried a simple pairing with peach slices and this proved to be a revelation--it made the peach taste more peachy. 

MIL: What other interesting pairings are on the menu?

HB: The smoked mackerel rillettes with coriander seeds with the Oloroso is great. The whole seeds are crunched up and release an explosion of citrus flavours which work beautifully with the spice in the sherry. For the Fino with Gruyere and clove fondue we followed a two-pronged pairing approach, matching both volatile and non-volatile elements: the Fino enhances the umami character of the Gruyere on the palate and then pairs up with the cloves on an aromatic level. It is a simple one to try at home--a slice of Gruyere and a pinch (not too big) of ground cloves, with a glass of Fino.

MIL: During your experimentation, were there any combinations that didn't work?

HB: We had a surprisingly high success rate. If there was no match on paper we didn't try it. This is really exciting because it marks the beginning of new opportunities for wine- and food-matching research. Although some traditional non-molecular rules for pairing remain, using this approach allows you to bend them.

MIL: Are any of the dishes on tonight's menu currently available at the Fat Duck?

HB: No but the quail's egg scotch eggs and the eccles cake with a sherry and stilton butter are from the Hind's Head [Heston's Gastro-pub, also in Bray] menu.

MIL: In Jerez we were told repeatedly that the best wine to go with artichokes is dry Amontillado. Your thoughts?

HB: Funnily enough, I was talking to my sommelier Isa [Bal, who has just won Best Sommelier in Europe], and saying to him what a pain in the butt artichokes are--and liquorice for that matter, for wine pairings, and he actually pulled out an Amontillado--and it worked brilliantly.

MIL: A surprisingly successful combination we tried with Ignacio Domeq was his Harveys medium sherry [a sweetened Amontillado style] with a sort of mildly curried prawn risotto. Why do think this worked?

HB: Well that might have been from the fruity components in the curry sauce and of course the lactose from the cream in the risotto is going to work well the sweetness of the sherry.

MIL: I have it on good authority that in New Orleans sherry is drunk with turtle.

HB: Funnily enough I went turtle fishing ten days ago in a river off Philadelphia as it's the season. They are called snappers and they are nasty brutes that eat ducks and geese and will take your finger off. When we were filming, one of them launched itself and nearly ripped the lens off the camera. I think it is the spices in the stew that make the match with the sherry, as the meat itself is quite strange.

MIL: What does it taste of?

HB: Chicken [laughter]. No it is actually really stringy. I think the Victorians had it right when they stopped eating them and started making mock turtle soup from calves' heads instead.

MIL: What is your next project?

HB: The all-singing, all-dancing Big Fat Duck Cookbook is now out and we have been working on two TV series: one is my interpretation of historic feasts and the other one has been on trying to sort out the Little Chef restaurant chain. But next year I am going to lock myself away in Bray and focus on creating a historic British tasting menu for the Fat Duck, which will be six to eight courses inspired by famous historical dishes.

MIL: Thanks Heston. Finally, can a renegade and iconoclast such as yourself turn water in to wine?

HB: It's funny you should ask that as we have been working with a magician for a while and for the occasional birthday we turn a rose petal in to an egg, and then crack it into a pan and scramble it with liquid nitrogen to make ice cream.

MIL: As you do.

HB: Then we do a sorbet that you flambé and eat while it's on fire. Anyway he has been working for six months on our Fat Duck Water--he won't show it to me yet but the idea is that from the same bottle you can pour both still and sparkling water at will and then when it's supposedly empty go round and pour a wine out of it--so literally turning water in to wine. It eagerly anticipated, not least by me.

Menu (served at Shoreditch House, London, September 29th 2008)

Manzanilla with Crab with Paprika on Toasted Country Bread

Fino with Gruyere Fondue with Fino Sherry and Clove

Amontillado with Pata Negra Ham, Peaches, Balsamic Vinegar, Rocket and Marcona Almonds

Oloroso with Smoke Mackerel and Coriander Seed Rilettes

Pale Cream with Quails Eggs Scotch Eggs

Cream with Eccles Cakes with a Stilton and Sherry Butter

Pedro Ximinez with Sherry Trifle

Picture credit: "Sherry, Sir" (detail) by Thomas Waterman Wood, freeparking/flickr

(Tom Harrow is an independent wine merchant specialising in wine-tasting events, cellar consultancy and vineyard tours through his company A Moveable Feast, Ltd. He is the author of a regular column for Urban Junkies and his own wine blog. His last piece for More Intelligent Life was about what to drink during a financial crisis.)