Drinks advice

Arroz con leche with Lustau Reserve PX San Emilio

In the little bowls is arroz con leche: round rice that has stood for forty minutes in milk and cream with cinnamon, vanilla and lemon zest, finished with cold butter. The Pedro Ximenez sets against it an almost black, very sweet wine that runs through the cinnamon register of the dessert.

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Arroz con leche
Photo: jlastras, CC BY 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Pedro Ximenez San Emilio comes from Lustau in Jerez de la Frontera and is one hundred percent Pedro Ximenez. After the harvest the bodega lays the grapes out to dry in the vineyard, the asoleo that the Consejo Regulador also speaks of, which turns them into raisins and strongly concentrates their sugar; for this style the Consejo sets more than 212 grams of residual sugar per litre. The wine then matures for twelve years in the solera system in Jerez, exclusively oxidatively, so with air contact and without flor. Lustau describes the colour as very dark mahogany with an iodine rim and advises serving at 10 to 12 degrees. The bottle contains 17 percent alcohol and comes in the half size of 37 centilitres.

Lustau Reserve PX San Emilio

The combination

Why this works together

Arroz con leche is sweet, but it is the aromatics that give the dish its character: a cinnamon stick, vanilla and a strip of lemon zest that steep in the milk for forty minutes. A Pedro Ximenez comes from exactly that register. Sun-drying the grape yields not only sugar but also the raisin and dried-fruit notes, and twelve years of oxidative ageing adds the dark, almost toasted layer that stands beside cinnamon rather than against it. The sweetness level is the precondition here: with a dessert the wine must be at least as sweet as the plate, otherwise its acidity comes forward and it tastes hard, and with more than 212 grams of residual sugar per litre this wine is well above that. At the same time the fat and protein from the milk, cream and butter give something back: they thin the syrupy quality of the wine in the mouth, so that the whole does not linger. On its own data sheet Lustau mentions desserts based on fruit or yoghurt; the Consejo mentions desserts that are not excessively sweet.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 1 hour and 50 minutes, including an hour's rest
  • Type dessert

What you need

  • 100 g round-grain rice
  • 200 g water
  • 1 litre whole milk
  • 200 g whipping cream
  • 50 g cold butter, diced
  • 150 g sugar
  • 1 cinnamon stick
  • a third of a vanilla pod
  • 1 strip of lemon peel

How to make it

  1. Bring the rice and water to the boil over high heat and stir for two minutes, so the grain begins to release its starch.
  2. Add the milk, the cream, the cinnamon stick, the split vanilla pod and the lemon zest.
  3. Let it all cook for about forty minutes over medium heat and keep stirring so that nothing sticks.
  4. Stir in the sugar in the last minute and dissolve it completely.
  5. Take the pan off the heat, fish out the cinnamon, the vanilla and the lemon zest and stir in the cold cubes of butter until they are absorbed.
  6. Spoon the rice pudding into small bowls and let them stand at room temperature for at least an hour before you serve them.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this Pedro Ximenez at 12 to 14 degrees according to the Consejo Regulador; Lustau itself states 10 to 12 degrees, so slightly cooler is fine. Use a catavino or a white wine glass and keep the portion small, at most a third of a glass. An opened bottle keeps for a long time: for oxidatively aged sherry the Consejo reckons on about two months with the bottle closed and stored cool, and the high sugar content makes this style in practice even more patient. This 37.5 centilitre bottle is therefore plenty for several evenings.

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