Moroccan Chicken - Wine Matching

David Thompson asked which wines to serve with a favourite Moroccan Chicken recipe. He said the predominant flavours are sumptuous corn-fed chicken, lemons, yellow peppers, olives and chick-peas slow baked in a rice filled, tagine-like dish.

Our wine suggestions

In this dish the main ingredient (chicken) isn’t the dominant flavour, so look to match the other ingredients. You don’t say whether there are spices but I suspect that things like cumin, coriander and fennel are in the recipe and also that the lemon you have mentioned is preserved lemon which would give an intense lemon flavour that is not high in acid like fresh lemon. The peppers will add a subtle yet noticeable sweetness and the chickpeas and rice add weight to the recipe. There aren’t any ingredients that call for a red wine, but everything points to a full-flavoured and full-bodied white.

We have a few suggestions for you; the first is White Rioja. These wines are medium/full in weight (to match the chickpeas and rice) and are quite heavily oaked, which gives the wine intense deep lemon flavours. This flavour works really well with olives and garlic and will also pick up on the preserved lemon.

Another type of wine to try would by a top-notch Italian Verdicchio. In particular, the 2004 Mirum, Verdicchio di Matelica Riserva by La Monacesca from Italy’s Marche region; this single-vineyard wine is fermented on its skins to give a bitter almond finish to the wine. It will be more subtle in flavour than a White Rioja but works well with olives (which can be tricky to match) and Moroccan flavours.

Our final suggestion would be a White Southern Rhône. The sunny climate ensures ripeness of grapes (we have selected from particularly successful vintages), ensuring good weight and full flavours, and the white varieties permitted for use in this region (there are many, including Grenache Blanc, Roussanne, Viognier, Bourboulenc and Clairette) give lots of beguiling floral, intensely ripe fruit flavours to act as a balance the warm heat of the spices while herbal notes pick up on the bitterness of lemon.

Wine recommendations:
2005 Allende Blanco, Finca Allende, Rioja, Spain. £16.55
2004 Mirum, Verdicchio di Matelica Riserva, La Monacesca, Marche, Italy. £16.15
2006 Geodaisia, Côtes du Rhône Blanc, Domaine Chapoton, Rhône, France. £8.75
2007 Coudoulet de Beaucastel Blanc, Ch. de Beaucastel, Rhône, France. £16.55

Wine Club Recipe Matching Service

You’ll find lots of ‘rules’ about matching wine with food on bbr.com and also within your Wine Club members’ binder, but for complicated recipes sometimes it can be difficult to understand exactly which flavour to match the wine with. Berrys’ food and wine matching expert, Nick Page, provides wine suggestions to Wine Club members’ dilemmas.

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