Wild mushrooms in season

Wild mushrooms in season

Assuming morels, girolles or ceps, cooked in butter with garlic and parsley, on toast or alongside meat.

Wild mushrooms carry several times the savoury intensity of the cultivated kind, and that savouriness is the whole problem: it sharpens tannin until a structured red tastes metallic and hollow. The compound that gives a fresh mushroom its smell also appears in red wine as it ages, so an older, earthier bottle mirrors the plate exactly where a young fruity one argues with it.

Pairs Perfectly. Pinot Noir, Burgundy, France. With a few years in bottle Burgundy develops mushroom and forest floor notes of its own, which is not a metaphor but the same compound appearing on both sides of the table. Light in tannin, high in acid and savoury rather than sweet, it is the most exact pairing in this whole list. A Marsannay from the northern end of the Côte de Nuits gives the same character at the affordable end.

Pairs Well. St Laurent, Burgenland, Austria. A cousin of Pinot Noir with the same red cherry and forest floor and rather more flesh. Softer in tannin than it looks and much easier to find than good Burgundy.

Pairs Well. País, Maule, Chile. Chile's oldest vines, long dismissed and now taken seriously: pale, tart and earthy with almost no tannin. Genuinely cheap and genuinely savoury.

Worth Seeking Out

Poulsard from the Jura, France. So pale it looks like a dark rosé, with no tannin to speak of and a scent of undergrowth and dried flowers. The Jura eats morels in cream and drinks this with them, and the logic is unanswerable.

Avoid

Firmly tannic reds and oaked whites. The savoury depth of wild mushrooms makes tannin taste metallic, and a barrel smothers the delicate earthiness that is the point of the dish.

Failing That

A Valpolicella, Veneto, Italy.

If All Else Fails

Pinot Noir, Central Otago.

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