Top five fine wine pairings with Greggs products

Starbucks, Burger King and Pret a Manger have all done it. Now a Greggs bakery in Darlington has dared to pair its ever-popular pastries with wine.

As reported in local newspaper the Gazette, a first-of-its-kind event taking place on Sunday at 2pm at the Vesuvio wine bar in Darlington will pair a range of Greggs products with a selection single-varietal wines.

The temptation to add our own top pairings was, like a Greggs sausage roll, simply irresistible.

Click through to discover our top fine wine pairings with Greggs products.

If you’re still hungry then check out our top 10 fine wine and junk food pairings – you know you want to…

1. Greggs sausage roll and Trimbach Pinot Gris Reserve 2009

Greggs bakes more than 100 million sausage rolls a year – 100 million reasons for the British public to raise a hearty cheer. Finding the right wine for this buttery and irrepressibly porky treat isn’t easy.

It has to be a touch on the sweet side to carry the sweet-salt flavour of the sausage roll and needs its own butteriness to speak in soothing, lyrical tones to the butteriness of the pastry. It also needs body to counter the immense quantity of grease, and a touch of spice to add intrigue to that pink, porky interior; in short, it needs a rich, spicy, delicious Alsace Pinot Gris.

2. Greggs cheese and onion pasty and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Montrachet 2002

Burgundy gave us the gougère, but Greggs gave us something infinitely better: the ever-satisfying cheese and onion pasty.

This creamy, cheesy and, indeed, oniony stroke of gustatory genius demands a rich, creamy, complex white and, given the Burgundian affinity with the product, there is only one: DRC Montrachet. No cheese and onion pasty should ever be drunk with anything less.

3. Greggs sausage and bean melt and Mas de Daumas Gassac Cuvée Emile Peynaud 2008

Pity the poor French: outdone again. While no one will ever be completely sure, it is thought that Greggs’ visionary combination of sausage and baked beans in a buttery pastry casing predates the Languedocien classic cassoulet. To gastronauts the world over, the original remains the best.

Legend has it that, upon hearing rumours of a great pâtisserie feat in the northeast of England, French epicure and gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin visited Greggs bakery to try the sausage and bean melt for himself, and is said to have declared: “Mon dieu, ça goute la ciel” (“My God, the taste of heaven”).

With a nod to le Sud-Ouest, it seems only fitting that the finest example of sausage-and-bean cuisine should be paired with the finest example of Languedoc red: the Mas de Daumas Gassac Cuvée Emile Peynaud.

Daumas Gassac is considered the only Languedoc grand cru and its Cuvée Emile Peynaud is only released in the best Cabernet Sauvignon vintages. Surely a pairing Brillat-Savarin would have delighted in.   

4. Greggs gingerbread man and Famille Hugel Gewürztraminer Vendange Tardive 2007

As Greggs itself makes plain, “gingerbread tastes better when it’s shaped like a tiny man”. As if this timeless classic biscuit wasn’t toothsome enough already, Greggs has even bedecked its edible ginger man with the “finest” chocolate buttons in varying hues.

If Greggs can go that extra mile, so can we: a drop of the sweet, unctuous, tropical-fruited and deliriously finely spiced late-harvest Gewürztraminer ought to do the trick. Might as well chuck a bit of foie gras on there as well while you’re at it.

5. Greggs cream finger doughnut and Champagne Jacques Selosse Exquise Demi-Sec

Light as air with a sweet, perfumed delicacy and breathtaking elegance, the Greggs cream finger doughnut is a dessert beyond compare.

While any wine will fall slightly short in a pairing with the cream finger, Selosse Exquise comes incredibly close. If you look in the dictionary under “indulgence”, you’ll find this fine combination.