Wines Pairings for Sweet and Savoury Pancakes

Today is Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday. Shrove Tuesday is the day before Ash Wednesday in the religious calendar, the first day of Lent.

The expression Shrove Tuesday comes from the word shrive, meaning confess.In many countries, Pancake Day is known as Fat Tuesday derived from the French term – Mardi Gras. This refers to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lenten season.

Pancakes are associated with the day preceding Lent because they were a way to use up rich foods such as eggs, milk, and sugar, before the fasting season of the 40 days of Lent. Lent represents the forty days and nights which Jesus spent fasting in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by the Devil.

The liturgical fasting emphasises eating plainer food and refraining from food that would give pleasure: In many cultures, this means no meat, dairy, or eggs. In the UK, many people choose to ‘give up for Lent’ something that they know they will miss such as chocolate, alcohol, or even crisps.

Pancake Day – recipes and wine pairing

So what do you have on your pancake? The BBC Good Food website suggests top 10 sweet and savoury pancake fillings; I have picked three to demonstrate what to look out for when pairing wines with pancakes.

Vegan Pancake Day recipe – Vegan tomato and mushroom pancakes

Things to consider in this dish: mushrooms (umami) making the wine taste less fruity, and for sensitive tasters maybe too bitter. However, the acid in the tomatoes will probably cancel out that effect. The strength of flavour of this dish is not delicate but not too strong either. So for reds no oak, low tannin, fresh and fruity e.g. Pinot Noir, Barbera, Bardolino. For whites also avoiding oak, with a moderate amount of fruit intensity e.g. Grüner Veltliner, Soave Classico, Chablis. If you are vegan and would prefer that animal products were not used to stabilise the wine) more and more wines are now being labelled as suitable for vegans.

Spicy Pancake Day recipe – Spicy vegetable fajitas

This dish contains arrabbiata tomato sauce which for some can be very spicy, and for others just creates a nice tingle. The key here is to remember that the spice in the dish will make the wine seem less fruity and in addition the warmth from the spice will combine with the chilli heat. Therefore, this will increase the burn especially for very sensitive tasters. So which wines could we consider? Medium flavour intensity, lots of ripe fruit, and not too much alcohol, and perhaps with a little residual sugar in the wine to balance with the spices. So look for cooler climate styles, for example head to Alsace, Germany, Loire, New Zealand, England, I was recently drinking a lovely fruity Pinot Noir from a local vineyard, Setley Ridge in the New Forest, which had 12% a.b.v., lots of juicy red fruit and low soft tannins.

Sweet Pancake Day recipe – Rhubarb compote with vanilla crème fraiche

This dish to me sounds amazing and what we have here is a lovely combination of tart acid in the rhubarb, softened by the vanilla sweetness, and the buttery crème fraiche. So we just need to ensure that our wine is at least as sweet as the dish. It also needs lots of acid, and a decent amount of flavour to stand up for itself. So we have a few options but I am going to suggest a Monbazillac, which will have the sweetness and acid, but usually not as quite as intense in flavour as its big brother Sauternes. If you have more options from where you can buy your wine explore some of the lesser known sweet wine regions of Bordeaux such as Loupiac, Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, Cadillac, Cérons et al.

Happy fasting!

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Pancake Day / Shrove Tuesday by Erica Dent DipWSET and Julie Strutt DipM, Enjoy Discovering Wine