Drinks advice

Seven-hour lamb shoulder with Osborne Vintage Port 1985

On the table comes a lamb shoulder that has stood seven hours in a low oven and falls off the bone with a spoon, with pearl onions and whole bulbs of young garlic that have melted along in the juices. Against that the port sets a 1985 vintage, which after forty years in the bottle has lost its sharp edges.

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Oven-roasted shoulder of lamb with thyme
Photo: jules:stonesoup, CC BY 2.0

From the shelf

The bottle

Osborne started in 1772 in Spain and also bottles port from the Douro. This is a vintage from 1985: port from the grapes of a single year, according to the label a maximum of two and a half years in cask and then further aged in bottle. That is the method the Instituto dos Vinhos do Douro e do Porto describes for this class: bottling two to three years after the harvest and then letting the wine evolve in bottle, for ten to fifty years. The bottle is at 20.5 percent alcohol and comes in 75 centilitres. After so many years in bottle there is sediment, and the institute advises decanting an old vintage.

Osborne Vintage Port 1985

The combination

Why this works together

A lamb shoulder that has spent seven hours at 150 degrees is something different from lamb from the pan. In that time all the collagen has turned into gelatine, and the plate arrives with fat, protein and a juice that is almost syrupy. That is the ideal base for tannin, which binds to proline-rich salivary proteins and makes them clump together, so the mouth feels dry; Zanchi and colleagues described this. In a forty-year-old vintage part of that tannin has already settled as sediment in the bottle, and what is left is taken away by the lamb fat. What remains is the other side of such an old bottle: dried fruit, nut and spice. Those notes tie in with the garlic and onions that have turned sweet, and with the caramelised edge the shoulder gets in the last half hour over high heat.

At the table

The dish

  • For 4 people
  • Ready in 7 hours and 50 minutes
  • Type main course

What you need

  • 1 bone-in lamb shoulder of about 2 kg
  • 2 brown onions, in rings
  • 4 sprigs of rosemary
  • 3 bay leaves
  • 1 litre chicken stock
  • 12 pearl onions with stalk
  • 8 small bulbs of young garlic
  • salt and ground black pepper

How to make it

  1. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees, or 130 degrees fan.
  2. Lay the onion rings, the rosemary, the bay leaves and the chicken stock in a large roasting tin that is roomy enough for the shoulder and the rest.
  3. Season the lamb shoulder generously with salt and pepper and place it skin side up in the roasting dish. Cover it with baking paper and then with aluminium foil. Put it in the oven for 6 hours.
  4. In that time cut off the tips of the silverskin onions, remove the dry outer skins and leave about 6 centimetres of stem. Also remove the stems and the dry outer skins from the garlic bulbs.
  5. Take the roasting tin out of the oven, carefully unfold the foil and the baking paper and spread the pearl onions and the garlic around the meat. Cover again and put the tin back in the oven for another 1 hour.
  6. Take out the roasting tin and set the oven to 220 degrees. Remove the foil and the baking paper and put the shoulder back in the oven uncovered for another 30 minutes, until the skin is crispy.
  7. Pull the meat off the bone with two forks and spoon the onions, the garlic and the reduced liquid over it.

In the glass

Serving

Serve this vintage at 12 to 16 degrees. Stand the bottle upright for a day and then pour it gently into a decanter, until you see the sediment in the neck. Use a generous glass: for very old port the institute advises a large glass, in which the aroma can develop. Do not fill it more than a third. According to the institute an opened bottle of vintage keeps well for one to two days, so open it on the day itself and pour it all.

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