Madeira and cream sauce, flavouring profile

Madeira and cream sauce, flavouring profile

A Madeira cream sauce is sweetly nutty, rich and savoury all at once, and the wine that suits it best carries some of that same nutty, oxidised depth.

The compounds that matter. The walnut, caramel and dried fruit notes of reduced Madeira, which come from slow exposure to air and heat, and which oxidised and aged wines mirror directly. Cream and butter, whose fat and soft dairy notes need acidity and some body. Glutamate from the stock and, often, mushrooms, which makes firm tannin taste harder.

What it demands of a wine. Body enough for cream, acidity to cut it, and a nutty, savoury or gently oxidised register. Tannin kept low. Sweet fruit and heavy new oak both clash with the depth of the sauce.

Seek. Vin Jaune from the Jura, dry, nutty and tangy, the regional partner to chicken in a cream and morel sauce. Dry Madeira in its Sercial style, sharp and walnut scented, a small glass alongside. Marsanne from the northern Rhône, broad and almondy, for chicken or veal. Pinot Noir from Burgundy, light in tannin and earthy, where the sauce goes on beef fillet.

Avoid

Tannic young reds, which the savoury sauce turns bitter. Lean, bone dry whites with no body, which the cream makes thin. Sweet fruited or heavily oaked wines, which sit oddly against the nutty depth.

Three to reach for. Vin Jaune, Jura, France. Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France. Marsanne, northern Rhône, France.