Dunking biscuits into wine?
Do you dunk biscuits - savoury or sweet - into your wine?
Sue Perkins did. On a short feature for her final season of The Great British Bake Off, Sue discussed the history of dunking biscuits in wine. There's also an Orlando-based blogger who dedicates an entire blog to the practice!
In Roman history, and in European Naval history more recently, people dunked hard biscuits into wine. This was a way of softening the biscuit, which can also make it seem sweeter. By doing so, the wine was also considered sweeter too. As wine-making wasn’t as good as it is today, dunking a biscuit into wine undoubtedly made it much more appealing.
Our ears perked up when we heard about this history, so in a moment of madness we thought we’d give it a go – although we decided against anything rich tea related because we didn’t want bits of biscuit left in our wine.
Here’s what worked (if you're inclined to dunk biscuits in your wine):
Gewurztraminer and a ginger nut biscuit
Okay, fine, this didn’t really work in the sense we don’t fancy doing it again. But it did work in the sense that it wasn’t bad. A nice, crunchy hot ginger biscuit along with the spicy, oily texture of the Gewurz was about as good as this experiment got with white wines.
Tannat and choc-chip cookies
This combo was lovely. However, dipping was a bit of an issue because the Tannat is such a powerful red wine that the cookies we had crumbled under the pressure. Nevertheless, chocolatey blackcurrant red wine like the Prima Donna Tannat and a good cookie was the adult version of dipping it in milk. Indulgent.
Here’s what didn’t work:
Sauvignon Blanc and pretty much any biscuit
Don’t bother, it doesn’t work. Not even with one of those Hovis digestives. You might pass with a cream cracker.
Most things
We’re going to stick with biscuits and tea. Sorry Sue.
