Provençal Pairings: Wine with Food

Voulez-Vous Vouvray?

Winery: Vignoble Alain Robert
Cuvée: Vouvray — Ammonite
Appellation: Val de Loire
Type: White
Vintage: 2022
Grape Varieties: Chenin Blanc 100%
Alcohol: 12.5%
Average Retail Price: France €14

I found myself in the city of Tours (Loire Valley) for a week without a car; it wasn’t an accident that we were carless — we actually planned it this way. We love spending a week exploring a new town (city). Thus, there were no visits to any number of the beautiful châteaux in the valley or, more to the point of this article, no visits to any Loire Valley wineries. Fear not, though, Les Halles — the incredible market house in Tours — had a wonderful wine store near the main entrance: Les Belles Caves. I got to know the owners pretty well.

Being there, I knew that I would want to write about Loire wines for you, even though they are “off topic.” A note to our die-hard Provence wine aficionados: I did get one very nice and ridiculously inexpensive Provence rosé at the Carrefour our first night, as Les Halles was closed. Oddly, the grocery store had a large selection of wine, but none that I could find from the Val de Loire. A puzzlement.

A recipe I created the week before in Paris, Crevettes au Paprika Doux, needed a good wine pairing. I made it several times during out three-week trip and everyone for whom I made it loved it. It is a wonderful and easy-to-prepare first course, or can be doubled as a main course. The recipe is on Cocoa & Lavender.

I took my list of ingredients and a description of the dish to my new best friends at Les Belles Caves. They both said the dish sounded wonderful and agreed that a Vouvray would be the perfect pairing. We looked at two from Vignoble Alain Robert and I opted for their Ammonite cuvée, as it was the more full-bodied of the two they suggested.

The wine is a lovely golden color, and offers aromas of citrus (grapefruit) and pear. It is a crisp, fresh wine with notes of green apple, honeysuckle, and dried apricot. It is well-balanced, and the acidity in the wine paired perfectly with the buttery paprika-wine sauce and shrimp. The dish brought out a touch of honey as the wine warmed up.

This is a very nice wine and, as Vouvray is readily available in the U.S., this pairing is something you could easily do for yourself or guests. In addition to my shrimp dish, it would pair well with all variety of seafood, especially scallops, and with chicken in a cream sauce or a blanquette de veau.