Diary of a Shopkeeper, 23rd February

Our A to Z of deli food and wine continues with letters R, S and T.

If you asked 100 wine merchants what their favourite white wine is, 87 of them would say Riesling. The other 13 would say Chardonnay. Strange that these two grapes, both out of fashion with most of the wine-drinking public, should be so revered by professionals. The truth is that great wines were made with these varietals a century ago, great wines were made a decade ago, and great wines are still being made. The flood of inferior German Riesling that swept across Europe in the 1970s and ‘80s tainted the grape’s image, just as cheap, factory-made Australian Chardonnay did in the ‘90s and 2000s. But the good stuff didn’t go away, it was just forgotten. And as most folk turned to newer fashions, it was left for those in the trade to snap up and enjoy the out of favour styles.

What is it that makes Riesling specially appealing to those of us lucky enough to taste hundreds of wines a year? There’s a clue in the improbably exact statistic I made up just above: Riesling is the most precise wine I know. Some wines fill your mouth with a generous swash of pleasure: Côtes du Rhône, Malbec, Barossa Shiraz, all want to give you a cheery hug. Riesling is different: it stretches a finger towards you like God creating Adam in Michaelangelo’s famous fresco. It’s a linear wine, a tight-rope: it walks a fine line between sweetness and sharpness.

Which brings me to the biggest misconception about Riesling: that it’s always sweet. True, its wines tend to have more natural sugar remaining in them than many, but it also has higher levels of acidity, resulting in a thrilling balancing act.

Riesling is the best wine I know to accompany partan, whether in a salad or tart. But it’s another kind of seafood we sell that excites me most: Sardines. Usually the rule for good fish is the fresher the better. But something happens to sardines when they’re gutted, cooked, and packed tightly in a tin, bathed in olive oil or a sauce of tomatoes, lemon or mustard. Flavours of great complexity and deliciousness develop, and the texture becomes both soft and flaky, just the right side of mushiness.

Tinned food was invented in the 1820s as a way of feeding armies on the march during the Napoleonic wars. Maybe because of that origin, we tend to think of sardines as a poor relation to fresh fish, and not worth taking seriously. They’re seen differently in the coastal parts of Spain and Portugal, where tinned fish is enjoyed in great variety and with serious discrimination. I’ve visited restaurants where, instead of a menu, you point to a tin on a shelf – one of ten shelves, each with 20 different tinned fish on it – which the proprietor then opens for you and serves with bread for mopping up the sauce and salad for freshness. Delicious!

It’s not just sardines that benefit from the canning process: it’s a positive benefit for anchovies, tuna and black scabbard fish. And an interesting alternative approach for mussels, squid, trout and salmon (the latter two favoured by Scandinavian canners.)

Sardines on toast are one of the great simple supper dishes of the world, but don’t stop there. Try the Sicilian classic, pasta con le sarde. Or mash sardines with butter, spring onions and spices to create an almost instant pâté to serve with bread or boiled tatties. You can even – with care – coat them in oatmeal and fry them like herring. And like herring, sardines are good for the health, a rich source of omega-3 fatty acids and other essential nutrients. They not only taste good but do you good too.

Taleggio tastes so good it must benefit my mental health if not my cholesterol levels. Originating in Lombardy in northern Italy, it’s a cow’s milk cheese that starts off as a fairly bland, bouncy block – the traditional shape is a square weighing about two kilos. The magic happens during the cheese’s ten weeks of ageing, when it’s washed every few days with a brine, which both prevents mould forming and encourages gentle fermentation on the rind.

The result is a distinctively pinky-orange surface with a pungent odour – one to rival Epoisses, Stinking Bishop and Minger. As so often with strongly smelling cheeses, when you cut a slice you find the flavour is mild, nutty and creamy – with just a hint of the fruity tang of fermentation. Taleggio melts quickly, so is good toasted, or slipped into a baked tattie. But you can also use it in more complex recipes, layering it with thinly sliced tatties and baking, or stuffing a chicken breast, or making a full-flavoured cheese sauce.

Your kitchen will pong for the rest of the day, but your tastebuds will buzz with pleasure.

This diary appeared in The Orcadian on 27th February 2025. A new diary appears weekly. I post them in this blog a few days after each newspaper appearance, with added illustrations, and occasional small corrections or additions.