Live fire cooking: What to pair with asado

For as long as I’ve been writing about wine there’s been an orthodoxy when it comes to pairing it with barbecue, as it’s been known until recently. The assumption is that it involves punchy marinades and heavily charred food (usually meat), which call for bold, fruity reds.

Now that pretty much every self-respecting restaurant has its own open fire, perceptions have changed. Asado, as it’s now more fashionably known, is all about subtlety: char yes, but smoke and even different woods.

Live fire has entered the world of fine dining. ‘Food cooked on the barbecue is not always punchy and intense – it depends on the type of oak (different oaks from different regions give different flavours to the final product), as well as the elements of and the idea behind the dish,’ says Alessio Ragusini, head sommelier at Michelin one-star Humo in London’s Mayfair district (the restaurant’s name even means smoke). ‘Sometimes, you find yourself in front of a delicate piece of fish or meat that you wouldn’t expect to taste that way just by looking at the fire pit. Most of the time, the best pairings here at Humo are not made using powerful wines, but rather delicate, mineral ones.’

Ollie Templeton, co-founder and head chef at Carousel in nearby Charlotte Street, agrees. ‘The type of wood makes a difference. Heavy smoke from something like oak might call for bigger, more structured wines, while with lighter fruit woods you can lean more into fresher, brighter bottles. The fire becomes its own ingredient.’

Lighter touch

I heard this reflective, nuanced reaction again and again from chefs and sommeliers, who enthused not about blockbuster Malbecs and Shiraz but whites and delicate reds such as Pinot Noir and Trousseau.

‘When it comes to pairing reds, we try to steer away from anything too tannic. Big, dusty tannins seem to fight with the more delicate aromatics you can get from cooking over fire,’ says Holly Wilcox of Mountain, a Michelin one-star restaurant in Soho well known for its wood-fired cooking. ‘Pinot Noirs from Burgundy or Mencías from Galicia work better with our Jersey beef rib.’

White wines are just as likely to feature among Wilcox’s pairings. ‘When thinking about which wines to pair with food cooked over fire, I’m always drawn to wines that mimic that smoky characteristic,’ she says. ‘Grapes grown on volcanic soils fare well.’

There are also going to be situations when the origin and style of the food are a more important factor than the cooking process. For example, at the popular Thai restaurant Kiln, also in Soho, it’s as much about the punchy flavours of the sauces and the sometimes eyewatering heat of the chillies as it is the grill and the clay pots that are used to cook the food. The restaurant’s wine buyer Akis Gikas favours fashionable, low intervention wines for their freshness, modest alcohol and versatility. Skin-contact wines handle heat well. It’s a similar scenario with Indian food.

No need to overthink it

Then, of course, there’s wood-fired pizza, which we’re so used to now that we wouldn’t dream of pairing it with anything other than the sort of wine we’d drink if it was cooked in our oven at home.

So maybe, as much as anything, it’s about seeing wood-fired cooking as the new normal – and pairing with it similar types of wine to those you would drink with food cooked using any other kind of grill or oven. All good news, really. Ultimately, you don’t have to drink blockbuster ‘barbecue wines’ with asado – subtlety is the name of the game.

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