Baby lambs, daffodils and asparagus – signals of springtime. Asparagus makes an appearance for only a couple of months; sure you can buy imported asparagus out of season, but it is an extremely perishable vegetable, so best bought close to the source. In France, in Italy and even in Michigan USA, they hold asparagus festivals to celebrate the brief, delicious hey day of asparagus.
Locally grown asparagus also has the benefit of providing this member of the lily family (along with leeks, garlic, onions and chives) with the decent winter chill that it likes. It’s the stalk that we eat, left to grow it would become a tall, feathery fern with red berries. It is a good source of folate, the nutrient for child-bearers, vitamins A and E. Asparagus is easy to match with food, but trickier to fit to a wine.
The great wine debate
Asparagus is famously difficult to match with wine because its unusual flavour can clash with many wines. A sauvignon blanc is the match most often cited, but Ruth Althaus of Stoney Vineyard goes straight past that to a gewurztraminer.
When she and Peter Althaus lived in their native Switzerland they would hop over to Alsace during asparagus time. “All of Europe would come to eat in specialty restaurants that served only asparagus, and they served it with gewurztraminer,” she said.
The asparagus was always white – achieved by “blanching” the spears by mounding soil up around them – which gives a different, more refined and elegant flavour than green asparagus, which Ruth also enjoys now, but only the fat spears.
“A Frenchman would never buy the thin asparagus you see in supermarkets here,” she said. “It comes from young plants, the spears are thicker as the plant gets older.”
A fruit-driven sauvignon blanc (but not a herbaceous, grassy one) would also be a good match with asparagus or a pinot grigio, a very food-friendly wine. A semillon sauvignon, with more tropical fruit flavours would suit, but Ruth would not match a chardonnay with asparagus, in spite of its affinity with the butter sauce that may accompany the vegetable.
A red wine with asparagus makes the vegetable taste bitter and the wine taste metallic.
At Terlano in Italy they make a sauvignon Spargelwein (asparagus wine) especially for the spring asparagus gastronomic festival.
At Hill Street Grocer we stock an Iron Pot and a Bream Creek gewurztraminer, an Iron Pot pinot grigio, and a Stoney Vineyard and Dalrymple sauvignon blanc, all good matches for your next asparagus feast.
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