Casal de Armán with Salmon tartare
Casal de Armán
Winery Casal de Armán
www.casaldearman.net
D.O.: Riberiro
Grapes: Treixadura 90%, Godello 5%, Albariño 5%.
Ageing: 9 months rest in the vat
Price: 10 €
Excerpt from the book “Pairings of spanish wines with exotic cuisines”.
Click to see the preparation of these dishes, in Asian recipes.
Click to see the preparation of these dishes, in Asian recipes.
This winery is somehow the figurehead of the new Ribeiro, the resurgence of what was already a flourishing wine region a thousand years ago, with a Denomination of Origin dating from 1932, but which was condemned by Franco’s dictatorship to make cloudy bar wines for forty years, plus a similar lap of inertia.
This is an amazing wine, cared from the vineyard by means of the most advanced and sophisticated methods of biodynamic farming (it is not sold as organic wine, but it is elaborated that way), which brings to our cup a set of aromas of hay, white flowers and fennel with balsamic hints, as well as clean fruit, ripe but fresh, with citric notes (grapefruit) and memories of mint.
Bottles three or four years old must not be undervalued, since the wine changes for the better.
Japanese salmon tartar
Salmon is still among the mythical fish of Japanese cuisine. It is therefore unusual to find a good assorted sashimi where the intense red colour of Hira-Zukuri fillets is not present.
It is also customary to use the trimmings resulting from the preparation of blocks for cutting and to dress it separately as with sashimi, which recalls those hundreds of tartars that have become fashionable and are presented as local in many menus, even in Japan.
It can also be dressed European-style, which is much more complex but equally tasty, and this wine will carry out its mission brilliantly.
Pairing
I was looking for a dish to enhance the virtues of this wine, because it really deserves it, but this wine is much more versatile than that. If we prepare a Japanese table of raw fish, you know, sushi, sashimi, tataki…, this wine will take the level of the gastronomic experience to its highest point. Respecting the subtle flavours of the fish, the wine will bring a levitating blast of flowers and fruit with every sip.
One of the points of conflict in these preparations is the soya sauce, together with wasabi and yakumis, so I concentrated on how the wine behaved after such aggressions, but it remained unmoved, so there is no risk of spoiling a bottle which is not easy to get, especially in Japan.