Look, I know it’s been worrying you. It’s been bugging me too: just which vintage champagne should we be drinking with our caviar? Is Cristal too rap-tastic for beluga, Krug too grand for oscietra? Decisions, decisions, and at this end of the price scale, not ones you’d want to get wrong, I imagine.

So what a relief it is that help is at hand. Over the coming year, Pearl restaurant in London is hosting a series of “Decadent Saturday” tastings, where they will match premium champagnes with premium ingredients. They start next month with valrhona chocolate, before moving on to caviar, oysters and, come December, for many the ultimate indulgence of white and Perigord truffles.

Last week I joined Pearl’s executive chef, Jun Tanaka, who is leading the tastings, on a dry run as he rehearsed his patter. When I say “dry” run, I mean it in an entirely non-literal sense, as Michael Davis, the head sommelier, soon set about bottles of Louis Roederer Cristal 2000, Krug Brut 1995 and Dom Pérignon 1998 in the suitably decadent style of a French cavalry officer, swiping the cork out with a sabre.

But first, the disappointment. We were to taste the eggs not of the mighty sturgeon of the Caspian Sea, but of farmed fish from the southwest of France. I suppose it’s fair enough. Last year’s UN trade ban on all imports of Caspian caviar may have been lifted, but even so, wild sturgeon stocks are down nearly 80 per cent on ten years ago, and poaching and the close attentions of the Russian underworld hardly make caviar the most environmentally friendly product. You can debate the sustainability of many types of fish, but, as Tanaka says, eating caviar from the Caspian Sea is simply not on.

That left us with three Prunier caviars from the Aquitaine, called rather unimaginatively Numbers One, Two and Three. They are all processed from the same species of sturgeon, so can never fully replicate the subtleties of sevruga, oscietra and beluga, which come from different species, but French sturgeon isn’t as inauthentic as it sounds. There was a wild oscietra population in the Gironde until the early Fifties and it’s still madly expensive at about £50 for a 30g tin. It’s also much less scary than other substitutes, like so-called Laotian caviar, made from catfish roe.

The early-evening session at Pearl begins with some cocktail shaking before moving into the kitchen, where Tanaka demonstrates how to make blinis. “I prefer my caviar without any of the traditional accoutrements — no eggs or chopped onions or chives. I don’t even like soured cream,” he says. “You don’t want to mask the flavour. Just a blini with a big dollop of caviar.”

Then on to the champagnes. Davis expects the Cristal, being the youngest and with the highest acidity, to work with the Sevruga-style Number One, which is traditionally the strongest flavoured; the Dom Pérignon ’98 to go with the oscietra (“because they are both in the middle”); the more rounded Krug ’95 to match the subtleties of the beluga clone. “But caviar is difficult to match,” he says. “It hasn’t got a lot of flavour profile to work with: it’s fishy and it’s salty.”

In the end, we all broadly agree that the Cristal falls apart, the Dom Pérignon has enough citrus fruits to work well with all three, and the Krug would be fine at a push. And the best caviar? Number Two.

The lesson, if there is one to be drawn, is that just as in politics, the middle way will please most of the people most of the time. And that’s something I shall have to remember next time I try to replicate the tasting at home — with lumpfish roe and cava.

Decadent Saturdays at Pearl, from £80 (020-7829 7000; www.pearl-restaurant.com)

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