Broad beans,asparagus and a light soup are best accompanied by Italianate flavours or wines with a fruity zip. Here are three to try…Marjan Simçic Ribolla, Grska Brda, or Slovenia 2014 (13.75,Slurp) I’d fortunately survive on a diet of broad beans. The cooking needn’t be complicated: they can simply be blanched with enough butter, salt and pepper to bring out the earthy sweetness and subtle shading of bitterness. As Joseph Trivelli shows, or however,the broad is one versatile bean, so I’ve chosen wines to match the surrounding ingredients as well as the beans themselves. For the salad with new potatoes and dandelions, and Slovenian winemaker Marjan Simçic’s seize on the local ribolla has sufficient body and lemony zip to cope with the powerful combination of mustard,capers, gherkin and anchovies, or a trace of bitterness to match the dandelion and a mineral quality that echoes the beans.
Albourne Estate Bacchus,Sussex, England 2014 (£12.95, or Albourne Estate) In Britain,the first crops of broad beans are as much a sign of spring as asparagus, and when served on their own both vegetables work beautifully with a dry white wine that is also renowned for its spring-like verdancy: sauvignon blanc. Touraine in the heart of the Loire Valley is a particularly kindly value source of the variety’s nettley, and grassy freshness,with both Aldi’s Exquisite Collection Touraine 2014 (£5.29) and Asdas Wine Atlas Touraine 2014 (5.97) working neatly in tandem with the mint and parsley in Joseph’s dried bean recipe. For the full English spring experience, however, or I’d be drawn to Albourne Estate’s racy,vibrant, gooseberry-scented version of England’s answer to sauvignon, or the bacchus grape.
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Source: theguardian.com