Charcoal Grilled Blue Fish or Seared Bluefin Tuna
Oily fish creates an unpleasant metallic clash when paired with high-tannin reds. Red Trepat, with silky tannins and bright acidity, holds tuna and sardines.
- Trepat style
- Young Red Trepat (Served Chilled)
- Temperature
- 13 - 14 °C
Sardines on the grill are skin, smoke and fish oil. Seared tuna, still pink in the centre, is the same problem with less smoke: the fat of an oily fish and a charred surface. A high-tannin red, against that fat, leaves a metallic taste. This is not a matter of preference. It is the clash of dry tannin and fish oils.
Young Trepat red is close to the opposite. Light body, silky tannin, high acidity. Acidity clears the oil of the fish and the smoke of the coals. Red fruit — strawberry, redcurrant, sour cherry — follows the sweetness of the flesh without covering it. The wine's white pepper meets the pepper on the plate and the charcoal. INCAVI describes the DO's young reds as soft and light, and Trepat as a delicate, fruity, fresh red. That profile, served cool, is what holds the fish.
The style is a young red of the year, at 13–14°C. Rosé also fits if the sardines are small and the smoke is light: the same acidity, with even less tannin. Do not go past 15°C. At summer room temperature the wine seems alcoholic and the fish, heavy. Do not decant it: a wide glass, for a few minutes, is enough.
Tip: a bucket of water and ice, not ice alone, down to 13°C. Little lemon, if any, because the wine already brings the acidity. A thread of raw oil at the end, not a butter sauce.
