Festive Sparkling Wine & Food Pairings

Planning your Christmas day dishes?

Our wines are made to be best enjoyed with the finest food, whether in the world’s best restaurants or at home with friends and family. With minds turning to the festive table, here’s our quick guide to our favourite, seasonal food and Sussex Sparkling combinations, plus links to some of the country’s best online artisanal food companies.

Many food suppliers have been hit badly by this year’s restrictions. The forced closure of restaurants, food markets and delis has left many of them with too much product and not enough customers, so this is a great opportunity to show your support by ordering direct from the supplier, although you had better move quickly if you want your delivery in time for Christmas.

Seafood

You can’t find a better combination than our Blanc de Blancs with fresh fish, crab or lobster. This delicate sparkling wine is produced from a blend of predominately Burgundy clones of Chardonnay. Leading wine writer Jamie Goode described it as “one of England’s finest.” Michel Roux Junior paired our Rathfinny 2016 Blanc de Blancs with Scottish Langoustines in a Light Butter Sauce with Celeriac and Carrots at Le Gavroche.

If you are tempted to try Michel’s recipe or want wonderful fish and seafood to kick-off the Christmas meal, it can be difficult to find a good, local fishmonger. Fortunately, it is now possible to have the freshest fish and seafood delivered direct to your door. Our favourites include Flying Fish Seafoods, The Fish Society, The Cornish Fishmonger, Oak & Smoke and Simply Oysters.

Rathfinny Blanc de Noirs & meat

Rathfinny Blanc de Blancs & seafood

Meats

Our signature Blanc de Noirs is predominantly blended using Pinot Noir grapes – yes, sparkling white wine from red grapes. The dark-skinned grapes are pressed gently to keep the skins from bleeding into the juice and the skins separated out quickly to avoid colouring the wine. What you get is almost a red wine-style depth of flavour that makes this wine a wonderful accompaniment to traditional Christmas meats such as turkey, duck and game and pork. Will Lyons of The Sunday Times, called it “decadent and world class”. Michel Roux Junior paired our Rathfinny 2015 Blanc de Noirs with Dry Aged Duck Supreme, Figs, Black Cabbage and Port Jus when preparing a special meal for us at Le Gavroche.

You may not be able to persuade Michel to cook your Christmas lunch but there are plenty of wonderful online butchers who can deliver the finest quality meat for your Christmas feast. If you cannot find a good, local butcher here’s a list of some of our favourites; Swaledale, The Wild Meat Company, The Ginger Pig, Northfield Farm, Wild Beef, Cobble Lane Cured, Farmison and Turner & George. Make sure you let them know the dates when you plan to cook, so they can ensure that everything will be still in date.

Rathfinny Rosé & dessert

Rathfinny Rosé & dessert

Desserts

Whether you are going for a traditional Christmas pud or something fruity, like an apple tart or rhubarb crumble, our sparkling Rosé Brut is the perfect accompaniment. Susy Atkins of The Sunday Telegraph chose it as her “star buy” and described it as “ravishing”. Michel Roux Junior paired our Rathfinny Rosé Brut with an Apple Tartlet with Glazed Apple Rose and Vanilla Ice Cream when he prepared a special meal for us at Le Gavroche.

Sourcing ice cream online might be something of a challenge, but these are some of our favourite online patisseries: Cutter and Squidge, Meg Rivers (we love their slogan, Bakers of Happiness), Konditor and the legendary Soho institution Patisserie-Valerie.