How to pair oysters with drink: from red wine to schnapps
‘Oysters got trapped in fancy restaurants, which is why a lot of people went off them,’ laughs Rob Hampton, a man on a mission to change that. We meet at Covent Garden’s bijou seafood parlour, The Oystermen, which Hampton founded with Matt Lovell. Together, they transformed a greasy spoon with a false ceiling into a shipshape seafood bar awash with fresh crustacea and intriguing elixirs.
In their company, I plunge into the role of brave matchmaker of oysters and ABV. ‘You won’t find our wines on offer in supermarkets,’ says Lovell, pouring steely Cretan white Assyrtiko to accompany Dooriel Creek oysters harvested by ‘a dude and his dad’ in County Mayo. ‘It’s the biggest-selling wine because we’re behind it,’ says Hampton of the enlivening combination, which sees the peach-skin scented wine dovetail with the cucumber-flavoured Irish oysters.
Next, well chilled Loire red vigorously fights before finally making firm friends with a small but powerful Kumamoto Japanese oyster, raised in Maldon. With an opening honeydew character, the seabed’s earthiness ultimately finds harmony with the forest-floor notes of the angular Cabernet Franc.
Soon, higher-strength fare joins the fray. Hampton wants to dispel myths concerning oysters and distillates. ‘Whisky won’t turn oysters to stone in your stomach,’ he urges, pouring young Woodford Reserve bourbon with a Porthilly, which he says is ‘the pinnacle of the English oyster from Rock’. Lovell agrees: ‘They are the creamy sweethearts of Cornwall.’ The pretty, velvety oyster becomes pudding-like under the dark spirit’s auspices, evoking salted caramel.
Finally, home-made smoked rye bread schnapps, from the duo’s friends at Snaps + Rye, brings waves of umami to Maldon oysters, leading to what Hampton calls ‘a salty baseline’. My tour ends with sweat-inducing Scotch bonnet-infused Konik’s Tail vodka, which Lovell later tells me ‘made a Japanese tourist cry’. Hot stuff.
