Foraging for fungus in the New Forest – don’t try this at home
John Wright
A heavily humid, though not rainy, October morning saw a group of (not particularly) intrepid sommeliers and journalists stomp through the sodden New Forest in search of mushrooms, thankfully in the encyclopaedic company of John Wright, forager extraordinaire. His enthusiasm for even the tiniest, ugliest, most irrelevant-looking (and almost invariably inedible) fungus brightened up the fascinating morning no end.
The word inedible took on a whole new range of interpretation that morning as John seemed to have an interesting, if somewhat bemusing, scale of inedibility, ranging from ‘oh yes quite tasty’ through ‘not especially tasty’ to plain ‘edible’ then ‘just about edible’, onto ‘bad’, ‘poisonous’ and ‘deadly poisonous’. His mantra for anyone thinking of foraging is “to know if you can eat something you need to know its name”. Made sense to me.
Our ‘aim’, for those who chose to accept it, was to rummage around the underbelly of the Forest to find 35 of the approximately 5,000 species of larger fungi that count the UK as their home. Larger being the “ones you can see” said John. Most of us were happy to watch and listen to John at work.
We (in the loosest sense of the word) met the target but our basket differentiation showed the disappointing proportion between the ‘can be eaten’ (no pleasure principle was attached to those words) and the ‘can’t be eaten’.
"Can be eaten"
"Can't be eaten"
The idea was to harvest sufficient fungi for lunch at nearby Hotel Terravina, accompanied by wines from host Louis Jadot. Fortunately reserve supplies of mushrooms had been bought-in.
The Château des Jacques, Clos de Loyse, 2009 (chardonnay, ~£13) was a great match for cep fricassee with artichoke purée and smoked eel, with its gentle, white floral nose and fresh, citrus and lemongass attack that developed a rich, soft texture and balance in the mouth. Hints of allspice added a note of layering; this is nicely balanced.
The Charmes Chambertin Grand Cru 2006 (~£83) was my best bet for the guinea fowl, smoked pomme purée and wild (not foraged by us) mushroom velouté. Bright and lifted with wild strawberry and crystalline raspberry fruit in a beautifully balanced, voluminous wine with definition, linearity and integrity.
It’s always difficult to match wine with cheese, especially when the cheeses include goats’ (Rosary), soft (Isle of Wight) and blue (also Isle of Wight), but my money was on the Domaine Ferret, Autour de Fuissé, Pouilly Fuissé 2010, (~£28) which had enough strength of character to hold its own against the cheeses, even the blue. Its identity emerged with white pepper and allspice with toasted vanilla and grilled nuts. This is a broad-shouldered, warm and full-bodied wine with hints of a fine butteriness among the Mediterranean fruit and nut combination.
Apparently all are available from Peake Wines/The Wine Cellar of Fareham (tel 01329 822733).
