How to make the most of what’s in season this month and the wines to match.
August is the month when summer fruit and veg are usually at their peak and hedgerows start to offer rich pickings for keen foragers. With the bank holiday coming at the end of the month, it’s a good time to get outside and enjoy all the fruits of the season with a glass or two with friends and family.
By August you should see sweetcorn living up to its name. If you grow your own, you’ll know just how sweet, crisp and bursting with flavour the niblets can be. Turn succulent kernels into fritters with finely chopped spring onions and, if you like, a hint of spice. Serve with avocado, a poached egg or a yoghurt dip. Ripe chardonnay is a joy here, as is pinot gris’ plump sweetness of fruit to match the kernels. A creamy and satisfying sweetcorn and potato chowder is terrific with the chardonnay too. The cobs are gorgeous barbecued to a caramel-like toothsomeness with a spicy or herby butter – a lightly oaked chardonnay or chenin blanc will fit, and a light, fruity red will do the trick.
Plenty of us grow our own peppers these days and come August, they are ripe and sweet. Stuffed with lamb and rice they’re a natural with Greek reds but if the stuffing is vegetables or herb, or fish, and rice, perhaps a rosé will really hit the spot. Rosé is also a star performer with Piemontese peppers – roasted halved capsicums, filled with whole tomatoes draped with salty anchovies and scattered with basil leaves – a not-so-tannic local red like dolcetto or barbera would be equally good. Finally, with the August sun blazing why not whip up a gazpacho rich with ripe tomatoes and red peppers and perfect with ice-cold fino or manzanilla sherry. .
Grouse might be in season from ‘the glorious 12th’ but is very hard to get hold of and not everyone’s cup of tea. Partridge comes along at the start of September and pheasant season begins in October, so why not try guinea fowl in August. Easily available and delicious, its flavour, somewhere on the richer side of top-quality chicken, is worth savouring. Simply roasted and served with traditional trimmings, it’s a pleasure with fine red or white Burgundy or other fine pinot noirs and chardonnays. Properly mature claret is a great match too, as is fine, older Rioja. Braising is a lovely way to cook this bird. If in dry cider it matches with good South African or Loire chenin blanc. Poached in a stock spiced in the Chinese style with star anise, garlic, peppercorns (Szechuan), soy and ginger it’s a delight alongside stir-fried pak choi and steamed rice. Pour a glass of dry muscat and enjoy. If you’ve added chillies consider something more aromatic like gewürztraminer, and then torrontes, malagousia, moschofilero and riesling.
Now is the time of year to stock up on stain removers as blackberry picking comes around. These gorgeous bursts of juicy sweetness are notorious colourers of clothes when we forage them, gleefully popping them into our mouths fresh from the bramble patch. Whether using their balance of sugar and acidity alongside savoury ingredients or as part of a sweet treat, they are a joy. Treat them like cherries when making a sauce for duck or dark game, or if countering slow braising of pork or beef cheeks, and pour a glass of ripe, generous Portuguese red, spicy, full shiraz or try the lesser known but ripe, delicious petit sirah. If you’ve swirled the blackberries though a cheesecake and put more on top a delicious match is a lightly chilled tawny Port or Maydie, a fruity fortified sweet wine from the French south-west. Blackberry and apple crumble or pie is a classic melding of flavours that works with rich muscats like Moscato de Setubal, also from Portugal, or Quady’s orange muscat from California. A fab allrounder with all of these is the versatile, frothy and headily scented Moscato d’Asti bubbly.
