It’s That Day tomorrow, in case you hadn’t already been browbeaten with more nudge, nudge, wink, wink messages than the flood of spam I receive for erectile disfunction. I normally enjoy the cheesy annual press releases exhorting me to recommend this or that booze as an aid to seduction, but they’ve been disappointingly thin on the ground. So I can’t tickle your fancy with more than notice of a Valentine’s Day Gourmet Food and Wine Masterclass at Vinopolis tomorrow. If anything was designed to provoke the desire but take away the performance, it’s surely wine with ‘smoked and confit salmon terrine, strawberry sorbet, venison casserole with a vanilla mash and spicy red cabbage topped off with a marquis au chocolat with an orange flavoured custard, coffee and rum’.

through rose-tinted glasses

Keen to avoid repetition and cliché, I’m not inspired this year by the usual roll-call of wines based on romantic names such as St. Amour, Chambolle Musigny Les Amoureuses, Cloof’s the Very Sexy Shiraz, Hugel’s Cuvée Les Amours, Mollydooker’s Carnival of Love Shiraz or even Soif du Coeur, complete with its own wedding site link. I thought for a moment of highlighting the steamier and darker sides of romance with the playful Ménage à Trois from California’s Folie à Deux, widely available in America but not here, Marquis de Sade Champagne, now discontinued I’m pained to say, or even simply South Africa’s Meerlust. It strikes me though that since the new sex is food and wine, it might be more useful to find suitable wine matches for aphrodisiac foods.

They say the North Italian white truffle is one of the great aphrodisiacs and if I could afford the £2000-odd a kilo, I’d be inclined to fork out for the erotically charged tuber magnatum. Truffle oil over pasta is a decent alternative and with it a modern barbera such as G.D.Vajra’s 2006 Barbera d'Alba, £19.95, Jeroboams shops, London, a slinky Piedmontese number full of ripe cherry and damson plum fruitiness, subtle oak and incisive bite. Mark Hix’s briney-fresh oyster recipes call for the suitably cleansing minerality of a great chablis such as Jean-Paul & Benoît Droin’s majestically complex 2007 Chablis Grand Cru Vaudésir, £37.15, Berry Bros & Rudd (0800 280 2440), but a relatively more affordable white Burgundy such as the voluptuous 2008 Bourgogne Blanc ‘Jean de la Vigne’, Domaine Cordier, £11.99, down from £12.99 , Majestic, or a superfresh, appetizingly dry 2008 Grüner Veltliner Hefeabzug, Nikolaihof, £14.99, Majestic, will fit the bill nicely.
say it with flowers

Champagne is a Valentine’s Day staple of course, usually pink, usually Laurent Perrier. It can be apéritif-style, like Marks & Spencer’s excellent value Champagne Oudinot Rosé made, as it happens, by Laurent Perrier, £5 off at £17.99, down from its usual £22.99, or the fine 2005 Green Point Brut Rosé, £17.49, Waitrose, or, for a more affordable alternative, the fine 2007 Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference Cava Rosé, £9.99, or delicious Bluff Hill Sparkling Rosé, £6.99, down from £8.99, M&S. For a truly luxurious rosé fizz, Louis Roederer’s 2004 Rosé Champagne, around £65, Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Harvey Nichols. with its youthful cranberry-like bite, slices neatly through the oiliness of smoked or hot-smoked salmon. I wouldn’t be doing my duty to the sweet of tooth without suggesting Harveys’ liquid prune-oozing, treacle-toffeed Pedro Ximénez, £19.99, half-litre, Waitrose, either with those salacious stimulants, vanilla, banana or dark chocolate, or just a tantalizing drop at a time, on his or her tongue.

Something For the Weekend 13 February 2010

2008 Sainsbury's Alentejano Portuguese Red

Delightfully fresh, ripe and juicy with cherryish flavours and a refreshing, rhubarby nip of acidity, this typical red blend of aragonez, trincadeira, and alicant bouschet from Portugal’s sun-baked south makes the perfect mid-winter, everyday quaffer. £4.49, Sainsbury's.

Under a Tenner

2008 Grüner Veltliner Gedesfrofer Moosburgerin, Kremstal

Classic Austrian grüner veltliner, fresh, fragrant and full-bodied with an undertone of white pepper and juicily refreshing appley flavours, delicious on its own, or a fine match for fish, vegetables and poultry such as roast duck breast. £9.49, Waitrose.

Splash Out

2001 Château Laroze Saint-Emilion

Drinking beautifully now it’s softened into a graceful middle age of supple-textured dark fruit flavours, this classic merlot / cabernet franc blend from Bordeaux’ Right Bank is the perfect Sunday lunch red. £19.99, down from £22, until 28 February, Majestic.

Ends