The World of Fine Wine has teamed up with Great British Chefs to find the best wine matches for a range of classic dishes. In this instalment, leading food and wine writer and WFW columnist, Joanna Simon, selects wines from the WFW tastings archive to pair with a favorite British tearoom cake.
After scrutinizing the Great British Chefs’ recipe, Joanna came up with two suggestions for matching the mellow flavors in lieu of tea or coffee: A Rutherglen Muscat like 919 Wines Classic Muscat South Australia from the Australian Fortifieds tasting in WFW62; and a Tokaji, such as Royal Tokaji Betsek Aszú 6 Puttonyos 2013, which was featured in the Royal Tokaji tasting in WFW58.
Below, you’ll find a brief introduction to the recipe by Karen Burns-Booth, as well as comprehensive tasting notes and introductions to the featured tastings.
Coffee and walnut cake
We are a nation of cake lovers … old family favorites are the ubiquitous Victoria sandwich, lemon drizzle cake, Madeira cake, chocolate cake and coffee and walnut cake, which is a personal favourite of mine. There’s something very “ye olde worlde tea room” about a lovely coffee and walnut cake, it beckons all cake and coffee lovers with its creamy good looks, and it’s the mainstay of the afternoon tea table.
I remember a wonderful old tearoom in Yorkshire, near to where I used to live—they always had a least four home-made cakes on offer, of which a grand coffee and walnut cake would be sitting amongst a fresh orange cake, chocolate cake and always a farmhouse fruit cake or Dundee
This Article was originally published on World of Fine Wine
