Wine Matching

It can be quite tricky to pair wine with soup, its something to do with matching liquids. I had a revelation at Christmas when I made my Chestnut soup with mace bay cream, a recipe I will share with you once I pull it out of my head and put in down on paper. I thought I'd match it with a rather expensive Soave that I'd been umming over at work for about 6 months but to be honest it was too thin and although the acidity was spot on, the body let it down.
My friend Piers had consulted his local wine boff and brought a Medium Madeira to match with the soup and obviously I scoffed. Some days I am an idiot and should be ridiculed, and this was one of those days. It was utterly perfect and complimented the nutty, rustic, earthy soup with its fabulous body but kept the acidic backbone we needed.
In summary, soup is hard to match with wine so we enjoyed the Ribollita with a Jadot Macon, Red Burgundy from Majestic at £8.99. It was juicy enough to be interesting but with no crazy tannins or astringency which would have ruined the delicate vegetable flavours of the soup. I think thyme is so earthy and autumnal that you need similar flavours and a slight brambly character really worked. We didn't have Madeira, but it would have probably have worked brilliantly.