A match for Xmas pudding

Hong Kong people tend to find Xmas pudding too sweet for their taste. There is however a way of making the traditional conclusion to the Xmas dinner somewhat more enjoyable - to match it with a sweeter and more complex wine such as port. This is the other eureka moment for food and wine matching, one that I mentioned in the entry about oysters and Chablis. It predated that incident by some 10 years, back to the time between Xmas and the New Year either 1987 or 1988.

I was a junior doctor in Wolverhampton and a couple, whom I have known as they met up many moons before, were also working and living nearby. We three were working at 3 different hospitals over Xmas and Boxing Day and so they invited me over for a belated celebration on the nearest Sunday. The local priest also came for dinner. For my part I brought along a bottle of 10-years-old Taylors Port and one of those individual pots of Stilton cheese. Pudding was after turkey but before cheese, when the priest suggested we crack open the port. To me, port with Xmas pudding was novel. It was also a revelation. The pudding was one of the "deluxe" versions with extra dried fruits and nuts. The rich sweetness of the the port cancelled out the heaviness of the pudding with the result that the flavours in both wine and pudding previously smothered by sugar came to the fore. The dried fruit and nutty notes in the wine echoed perfectly the same ingredients of the pudding and greatly enhanced the enjoyment of both. It also provided me with the rule of thumb now familiar to all afficionados of desserts and dessert wines that a pudding needs a sweeter wine.

As for port with Stilton, that was another eureka moment (not for me but for my wife) and it has to wait for another tidbit.