The next day or two will see many of us racing to buy not only last-minute chocolate eggs, but a decent bottle or two of red for the long Easter weekend. And it’s likely these will be destined to go with a feast of roast meat, either lamb, beef or pork.
Don’t go for anything too flimsy, then. Roast red meats need brightly flavoured reds with some tannic structure to stand up to them, and everything else that is piled on the plate. That said, aim for rounded and integrated rather than tough, heavy tannins – and there’s a certain slight sweetness about roast meat that welcomes a wine with very juicy fruit. Ripeness is all, then.
My go-to part of the winemaking globe for matching roast lamb in particular is Iberia. The sweetly ripe, oak-barrelled reds of Rioja are especially brilliant at pairing up with lamb, and there are plenty of options from Portugal too. I particularly like the table reds coming out of port country, northern Portugal’s hot and arid Douro Valley, with roast lamb. If you want to splash out on a truly impressive Iberian red, then Majestic has the venerable and deeply mellow Vina Ardanza Rioja Reserva 2012, Spain (14.5%) on offer at £19.99, down from £27.99 until April 18, in-store only.
Others may like a decent, vivacious New World pinot noir. It’s a terrific match for rare beef and roast pork and I’ve got a gem below. And yet more who go in heavy with the pepper, garlic and rosemary on their roasts, may look for a spicier, more savoury style, provided, often, by a wine from the Rhone or Languedoc-Roussillon regions of southern France.
