Casillero del Diablo Sauvignon Blanc (2021 Vintage)
Price - £7.50
Country of origin - Chile
Score - 7/10
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Rarely do I find myself drinking white wine. This isn’t out of any inherent dislike of them, but because most of the time I eat foods that I think work better with red wines. In the past, most of the time when I drank wine with food, it was with foods such as pizza or pasta dishes with tomato-based sauces. However, recently I decided to expand the types of dishes that I cook for myself, and therefore expand the wines that I try alongside them. Now, I know very little about white wine; I bought this bottle of Sauvignon Blanc not knowing what foods it pairs well with. I have bought Casillero del Diablo wines a few times before (there’s a merlot review in the works currently), and they’ve always been pleasant, so I thought I’d stick with a brand I knew. The other reason was because it was also on offer at Morrisons, and I needed some other wine for a barbecue I was attending.
When I’m trying a new wine, I like to drink it with foods that it is known to pair well with. This meant I had to engage in a bit of research. One issue I regularly encounter when researching wines is that a large number of the suggested meal pairings include meat, something I find annoying as a vegetarian. I understand why, the websites that have the most information tend to be related to traditional French cooking, which is known for fish courses and meat heavy main courses. Therefore, I usually look for the recommended flavour and preparation method pairings for each wine I try; the high tannin content of Cabernet Sauvignon works well with the bitter from charred food (see my article on Baron d'Arignac Cabernet Sauvignon for a more in-depth explanation of why), and the strong taste of Malbec pairs excellently with rich, flavourful sauces.
So having studied up on Sauvignon Blanc, I settled on the recipes I’d cook. The first of these was a spinach and cream cheese pasta from SORTED Food’s Sidekick app. I decided on this dish as the wine is a light and fresh and fruity; it would work nicely alongside the taste of garlic, herbs, and cream cheese. The pasta is served with rocket on the side, which adds an excellent crunch to a dish that is otherwise quite one-note in terms of texture. The wine also complements the peppery flavour of the rocket. When paired with this wine, there are a lot of flavours going on: there is garlic, heat from chillies, creaminess from the cream cheese, earthiness from the spinach, and peach and citrus fruitiness from the wine. Despite this long list of flavours, it never felt muddled or “too much”; I like food that has a lot going on.
The second dish I cooked for this wine was Aglio e Olio, I didn’t cook it in a particularly authentic way, but nonetheless it was delicious. It is an incredibly simple dish, requiring only four ingredients if cooked in the traditional manner. Anyone who has ever eaten something I’ve cooked will know that I’m quite a fan of spice in my food, so of course I added chilli. I also added a large amount of black pepper and some lemon juice, just to add a few more complex flavours. Alcohol and spice do not always work well together; and whilst beer and curry does are amazing together, other forms of booze can seriously clash with spicy food. This is because alcohol is an irritant in the mouth, activating the same pain receptors that the capsaicin in chilli affects, making the spice more painful. Capsaicin is hydrophobic (which is why drinking water does not help much when you eat spicy food) but it does dissolve in ethanol. Beer or wine does not have a high enough alcohol content for this to happen though, as they have a very high water content. Drinks with a high alcohol content will help against the heat both by dissolving the capsaicin and, depending on how much you drink, getting you so drunk you don’t feel the pain. In this regard, the Sauvignon Blanc may have not been the best choice. Whilst it was nice and refreshing between each mouthful, it did nothing to save me from the heat caused by my excessive addition of chilli. In the end, I finished my food without wine, waited for my burning in my mouth to ease up, then I drank the rest of the bottle whilst watching the sunset from my window.
I think this was a good first foray into white wines. Despite my less than perfect flavour pairing with my second meal, I liked the Sauvignon Blanc quite a bit. Next time I’ll probably try one from a different brand, and work to find different foods to drink it with that won’t make my mouth feel like hellfire.
(AUTHORS NOTE – I know that it’s a paid app and all, but I highly recommend the SORTEDFood Sidekick app. It’s got some really good recipes on it, with a very good selection of vegetarian dishes. I’d also recommend their YouTube channel for anyone who is interested in food/cooking-based content.)
(AUTHORS SECOND NOTE - To my Italian friend who hates it when people ruin pasta, I am sorry for the way I butchered the Aglio e Olio. I know it wasn’t cooked the proper way, but it was delicious, and I will cook it like that again. But maybe with less chilli if I want to eat it with wine. I guess recipes exist for a reason…)
(AUTHORS THIRD NOTE - Sorry that it took me so long to write another review. I've been on-and-off writing this for the last two months, a sentence or two at a time. There will be more coming some time in the future, but temper your expectations, they will be few and far between. Whilst I do love wine, my liver cannot handle too much of it, and it takes a surprising amount of my "creative juices" to write something this coherent.)
