Engaging foodies? McGuigan & Torode and Tagus Creek & Metcalfe launch QR codes and recipes

John Torode demonstrates mustard crusted beef (fillet), paired with McGuigan Reserve Shiraz

Wine producers and communicators might well look on enviously at the amount of media coverage extended to food (I know I do!)  It’s COLOSSAL in comparison.  In no small part thanks to celebrity chefs and national treasures like Mary Berry, who have stoked the fires of the foodie revolution and all the paraphernalia that goes with it – books, branded food products and kitchen equipment.

More importantly, they have engaged consumers about the provenance and craft of food, inspiring us to take a step up in quality.  Since the first was established in 1997, the Farmers’ Retail and Marketing Association estimates that the UK now has around 750 farmers’ markets.

So if you can’t beat ‘em, why not join ‘em?  Australia’s McGuigan Wines and Portugal’s Tagus Creek brand have done just that with the launch of bespoke recipes (complete with cooking demonstration videos) matched to their wines.  Click here to find out about the McGuigan wine and food matches (and for a chance to win a day’s cooking course with John Torode).  Click here, here and here to view Tagus Creek’s videos.

What’s new is that the recipes can be downloaded from the QR labels on McGuigan’s and Tagus Creek’s bottles via smartphone (or accessed via the internet).   Tagus Creek’s download includes a handy shopping list of recipe ingredients – a neat practical touch.  McGuigan, on the other hand, makes a virtue of the personal touch.  With 50 recipes, three of which are proposed for each wine, input personal (food) preferences and you’ll receive “a personal recipe collection with additional food and wine partners.”

While Falua’s recipes are devised and presented by wine expert (and co-author of The Wine & Food Lover’s Guide to Portugal) Charles Metcalfe, Hunter Valley based McGuigan has hitched itself firmly to the foodie bandwagon and appointed chef/restaurauteur John (Smiths, The Luxe) Torode to this role.   It’s a smart move given BBC TV’s Masterchef programme has made Torode a household name (and an accomplished, likeable presenter).  Plus, not only is he Australian, he’s also a Hunter Valley boy (which remarkably, Neil McGuigan says was lost on him until he picked up on Torode’s “Aussie twang” during their first phone call).

So what about the food matches?  I had an opportunity to put the McGuigan/Torode recipe collection to the test when I attended a press launch on Tuesday.  In tune with McGuigan’s wine philosophy, Torode describes his recipes (catering from “picnics to dinner parties”) as “accessible and affordable.”  The food was delicious but, while McGuigan Semillon Blanc proved a versatile performer, the wine matches didn’t especially excite, save for Thai pork relish lettuce cups with Black Label Shiraz.  It was an unconventional match, but then the Shiraz was smooth, sweet and quite light for the genre.

And I guess that’s the nub of the problem for me.  If I was cooking Torode’s dishes, especially the fillet steak in brioche recipe which he so deftly demonstrated, I’d be looking for rather more ambitious wine matches than the generic South Eastern Australian brands we sampled.  Similarly for Metcalfe’s venison and black pudding dish, much as I think its wine partner (Tagus Creek Shiraz Trincadeira) is a cracker for £5.99!

Perhaps this indicates that I’m a food and wine snob.  But where McGuigan’s and Tagus Creek’s easy-drinking wines tend to sell by reason of branding or pricing as opposed to provenance, I wonder if an opportunity has been lost to engage consumers about wine provenance?  It’s worked for food, so why not inspire this self-same target audience – foodies – to take a step up the quality ladder for wine too?