Such is the communion between wine and food that I find it hard to drink without eating or eat without drinking. Each makes the other taste better; it’s as simple as that. The real joy comes when both food and wine are of the same region, or terroir, so that you are eating as locally as you are drinking.

Tucking into an Alsatian onion tart or a cabbage choucroute in Alsace while sipping a glass of fragrant gewürztraminer makes an effortless sort of sense, because both food and wine are the product of the same soil, climate and rainfall. The slow-braised game dishes and hearty grilled steaks of Tuscany are perfect mates for the region’s rich and powerful Super Tuscans. Such gastronomic symmetry isn’t always possible — although a few more years of global warming and we might be able to knock back a Scottish sauvignon blanc with the local salmon — but what-grows-with-what is still the best guide.

The ultimate food and wine match, however, is to cook the right food in the right wine, such as the last of the season’s pears and rhubarb with a spicy Australian shiraz or an Italian valpolicella. The mellow fruit of the wine takes on the spices — star anise, cloves and cardamom, as well as the more expected vanilla and cinnamon — transferring them to the pears. It is then boiled down and reduced by half to be a sweet syrup for the tangy rhubarb. Best of all, the recipe uses only half the bottle.

Ingredients

Serves 4

Prep: 10 min
Cook: 45 min

Serve with thick cream or ice-cream

300ml red wine
300ml water
150g caster sugar
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
2 cinnamon sticks, broken
2 star anise
4 cloves
2 cardamom pods, crushed
4 tall pears, peeled
400g rhubarb

METHOD

Combine the red wine, water, sugar, vanilla bean, cinnamon sticks, star anise, cloves and cardamom, and bring to the boil, stirring, until the sugar has dissolved.

Peel the pears, trimming the base to help them to stand upright, and add to the pan, adding more water if necessary to cover. Simmer for 20 min or until tender. Remove the pears and boil the liquid until syrupy, about 300ml.

Strain out the spices and return the syrup to the pan.

Chop the rhubarb into 3cm lengths and poach in the syrup for 5 min or until tender. Serve the pears upright on a pool of rhubarb.

Times Recommends

• Jane MacQuitty’s party wine
• Oliver Peyton's Christmas pavlova
• Blood orange cosmopolitan