What chef wines are worth raising your glass to? | Fiona Beckett drinking

It has always surprised me that chefs who make their living creating delicious dishes seem, on the whole, indifferent to what to drink with it. There are exceptions, of course – there always have been. Mark Hix, Mitch Tonks and Rowley Leigh come immediately to mind, as does the St John team - although this is as much due to their exuberant co-owner Trevor Gulliver, who has built a range of branded wines worthy of no any small merchant. list, like the cuisine itself.

That said, there has been a trend lately among chefs to release their own wines, either as an extension of their brand - who doesn't love a little merch? – or by planting actual vineyards, like Michael Caines in Devon and Robin Hutson (admittedly a restaurateur rather than a chef) at The Pig in the South Downs. Most are fairly traditional, although the Banks brothers in Yorkshire have made innovative use of cans, and Gordon Ramsay and Rick Stein are both longtime collaborators at the British-owned Château Bauduc in Bordeaux. Nuno Mendes, meanwhile, has just launched a range of wines with Portuguese producer Niepoort, and José Pizarro recently put his name to a truly excellent cava (see today's selection).

And with many listings now focused on natural wine, it seems the wackiest wines aren't banned either. Luke French de Jöro and his wife, Stacey, have bottled a Spanish wine they call F*ck 2020 (formerly known as F*ck Boris), which they sell at their new Sheffield boutique, as well only online and in restaurants. It's an exuberant natural wine that the French say goes with everything, including a flame-grilled Whopper.

Of course, you'll pay more for a bottle of these chef-approved wines than you would for a standard bottle at Aldi or Lidl (more of which next week). For example, Caines' newly released Triassic Pinot Noir, while sumptuously rich and delicious, is £110 on its wine list, but put that in the context of the investment involved in planting its 11-hectare vineyard ( around a quarter of a million pounds) and the time it takes before a bottle even hits the table (at least three years for a still wine and five for a sparkling), you can see how they arrived at that figure .

With the Covid disruption, combined with the recent pressure on fuel and food costs, restaurants need all the extra revenue streams they can get. they can imagine right now, and customers are not reluctant, it seems, to support them. "People always ask us, 'Where can I buy this wine?' when they taste our pairings," says Stacey French, who has just opened the couple's first physical store in the Cutlery Works food hall in Sheffield. "A chef's seal of approval works wonders in retail."

Five Chef Approved Wines