With the lampuki season well under way, we are entering that time of the month when the fish start to get bigger and traditional dishes like lampuki pie and aljotta will start to appear for a brief period of time on many restaurant menus or speciality boards. Alternatively of course, the fish can be cooked in a number of other ways, be it pan fried, oven baked, poached, grilled or even barbecued.

In addition, the fish is often stuffed, covered in herbs and spices or served up with a variety of sauces. So, the question I was asked the other day: “What is the best wine to drink with my lampuki” is not an easy one to answer!

Each of the cooking processes used to prepare the lampuki, will in itself alter the flavour and sometimes the texture of the fish, even if no other ingredients are added.

For example, a poached fish will result in a very clean-flavoured fish meat that is both delicate and moist, whereas barbecued fish meat is often drier, with a tighter consistency and comes with a charred flavour. So these dishes should be accompanied by a different wine.

I would definitely recommend a crisp, dry unoaked white wine with the poached lampuki, but for the barbecued version a full- flavoured dry, possibly oak-aged white wine would be needed, in fact I might even be tempted to choose a light-bodied red.

Similarly, a fish cooked using the same process, but with different ingredients would also require a different wine. For example, a lampuka simply pan fried in a bit of butter will require a light, clean style of white wine, whereas a lampuka pan fried with extra virgin olive oil and garlic and then topped with a caper sauce will require a completely different style of white wine that is softer and fuller flavoured. Basically as a good “rule of thumb”, the heavier the flavour of the finished dish, the fuller the wine needs to be and lighter cleaner flavoured dishes need light, clean-tasting wines.

Here are a few recommended lampuki and wine combinations that work really well together.

Plain poached or oven-baked lampuki with Medina Girgentina Chardonnay; plain pan-fried lampuki with Pjazza Regina White; plain grilled lampuki with Victoria Heights Chardonnay; lampuki carpaccio with a lemon dressing and Medina Sauvignon Blanc; smoked lampuki with Victoria Heights Chardonnay; aljotta (fish soup) with either Medina Rose Grenache or Pjazza Regina White; lampuki with a strong sauce (e.g. caper sauce) and Grand Vin de Hauteville Viognier; lampuki pie with Gran Cavalier Chardonnay, barbequed or char grilled lampuki with Medina Syrah, Carignan, Grenache.