Eggs and Wine Okay

Filed in archive Food and Wine on April 16, 2006

Eggs are synonymous with Easter. I remember spending hours on Easter day hunting for, then hiding, then hunting again for the same decorated boiled eggs. Usually, by the time my sisters and I were done with them, they weren't very appetizing. But, I have heard that some people are able to actually eat their eggs after an Easter egg hunt.

Jane MacQuitty not only eats her eggs, she says that you can also find some fairly decent wines to go along with them:

Easter eggs for all this weekend, and if you cannot face the chocolate variety and want to dish up scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for a quick supper treat, don't believe the claptrap you read about wine clashing with eggs. Good wine is not spoilt by a fresh egg, regardless of how you cook it. Sunday night in our house is soufflé or poached egg night, made with my sister-in-law's delicious, flavour-charged freshly laid eggs, and not once has white, red or even pink wine suffered from this combination.

So eggs and wine it is. And given that you may want a verdant, spicy spring-like white for other Easter aperitif moments, look out for the 2005 Gobelsburger Riesling from Austria (£7.49, Waitrose). Red burgundy works well with eggs, too: the Burgundians love oeufs en meurette (poached eggs in red-wine sauce), and you can re-create this dish in Blighty using the sweet, ripe, grassy, gamey 2004 Sarrazin Bourgogne Rouge Vieilles Vignes (£7.99, Majestic, or buy two for £7.49 each).

Spring lamb, especially the mild, pale, melt-in-the-mouth, milk-fed version, and the tangy pré-salé or salt-marsh varieties, is best partnered with beaujolais, but I would be happy to drink the Sarrazin with it. Alternatively, plump for the wondrous 2004 Morgon des Souchons (£8.49, Oddbins), from Condemine-Pillet, whose rich, velvety, plum and raspberry fruit is a dream.

If you want to lay out half this sum, the beaujolais to go for is the tried-and-trusted 2004 Louis Jadot Beaujolais Villages Combe aux Jacques, whose ripe, elegant, cherry fruit is a spring star, with a quarter of the blend made from superior, declassified Régnié and Morgon fruit - as it's Easter, buy three for £5.33 each at Thresher and Wine Rack.