Beets

For wine, winter is a time of new life, as freshly fermented wines take their first steps towards being bottle ready. Inky reds settle sleepily in serried rows of stacked oak barrels. Newly bottled pet nats wait to be cracked, their effervescence still moderated by unfermented sugar, a sweetness that betrays their still slightly callow youth.

I’m not sure why I think of beetroot as a particularly wintry vegetable when it’s just as happy and even sweeter through early and late summer; I think it’s due to its Eastern European and Slavic uses that it feels appropriate when nights are longest and mornings properly frosted.

The beetroot comes in a dazzling array of colours, from ember bright red oranges (Badger Flame), to boardwalk white and pink (Chiogga). However, I feel the Ur beet is dark purple; the deep metallic bruise of borscht and old stories from long departed forests. The sort of purple that stains fingers and work surfaces, bleeds into dishes. Winter beets are earthy, their sweetness moderated by an awkward savouriness; an acquired taste maybe, but one that can run deep.

Key to the flavour of beets is Geosmin, the smell of the earth and petrichor after heavy rain. I think this earthiness is why it plays so nicely with fiery, oily flavours. Think of every bistro dish of flamed mackerel, beetroot and horseradish cream, the Chrain of the diaspora’s delis and so very many roasting tins.

When beetroot is made central to a dish, I tend to lean towards minimal intervention Cabernet Franc and its bedfellows, they share a touch of the mud of beets but add an edge of blackcurrant herbaceousness and, often, a spritz of lightly bitter CO2. I think the inherent wintriness of beets precludes their pairing with hotter climate wines, so I’m once again drawn to the Loire; the languid cool and cut apple lanolin aromatics of Chenin Blanc work well with beet salads, while creamy goats’ cheese and ricotta additions draw me to oaked Sauvignon.