Vegetarian Food and Wine Matching with Sally Evans and Wendy Narby

This show was published 03 November 2023

Overview

Sally Evans and Wendy Narby are the duo behind a website dedicated to plant-based food and wine pairings. Sally is a vegetarian and a winemaker in Fronsac, Bordeaux and Wendy is an wine educator and wine writer also located in Bordeaux - her book is called The Drinking Woman's Diet.

Realising that much of the advice is based around meat and fish dishes, and pretty much ignores vegetable dishes, together they created a website www.wineand2veg.com to help people explore vegetarian foods and wine.

Their thinking is based around the elements of food such as sweetness, salt, bitter, acidity and spices and how that drives wine pairings. They suggest considering the sauce that is in the dish and how those flavours can lend themselves to different wines.

They hope to demystify and open up the conversation to people on plant-based diets to encourage them to experiment with different pairings.

They publish seasonal recipes on their website e.g. this Autumn, a vegetarian moussaka paired with a fruitier, simple Merlot that worked the best out of a few pairings they tried.

The wines they recommend are from Bordeaux, with its huge diversity, from sustainable or organic producers.

We also discuss with Sally what some wines are and are not suitable for vegetarians and vegans. This is to do with the fining process in wine making where animal products might be used such as egg whites, fish eggs (isinglass). These days non-animal derived fining agents are increasingly being used e.g. pea protein, but not all producers state on the label whether their wine is suitable for vegetarians or vegans.

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The music used for the UK Wine Show is Griffes de Jingle 1 by Marcel de la Jartèle and Silence by Etoile Noire.