No one likes a barbecue more than a winemakerand in my experience, no one does a barbecue better, either. From Barossa and Mendoza to Stellenbosch, Corbières and Rioja, the vineyard barbie, braai or asado is the epitome of wine-country cooking. Meat and fish over a smoking fire of vine cuttings is almost always the centrepiece of any end of harvest party or visitor hospitality.
Little thought goes into the question of which bottles to drink on these occasions, given the obvious answer: the host’s own wines. Happily, this will usually work on the same “what grows together, goes together” principle that applies to so many classic wine and food matches. It would be hard to devise more perfect combinations than, say, tiny, tender lamb chops with softly mature tempranillo from Rioja or Ribera del Duero; a bursting, sweetly spiced morcilla black pudding and a charred and bloody slab of bife de chorizo (sirloin) steak with a fragrant, sweetly ripe, structured malbec from the Uco Valley; or an impossibly plump tiger prawn tinged with chilli, garlic and citrus with a startlingly limey draught of ocean-cool, bone-dry Clare Valley riesling.
