Entente Cordiale: why French wine and British food are a perfect match

Hopping across the Strait of Dover remains something of an Olympian task. A mere 20 miles of water it may be but ten days of quarantine on return is unpalatable no matter how good the baguettes are across the Channel. Even once the rules change, it will be too late for the holiday hopes of many this summer. But it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a summery French wine. The good news is that French wine and British food make for a surprisingly strong match.

I am sometimes loath to recommend anything other than English and Welsh wine given the quality of what we now produce on home soil. Indeed even if you think the glories of an English sparkling white or rosé would be wasted served alongside the slab of red meat you’re cooking on the barbecue, we are now producing growing amounts of red wine in this country too.

But with our own wine now so good that even the French are buying it, we can be confident enough to enjoy a tipple of their stuff now and again too.