This is a little late, since it would have come in handy for easter, but a friend sent along a link to a Times article on matching red wine with lamb.
Tender, melt-in-the-mouth spring lamb has a special relationship with red wine. Ask wine insiders what meat they would serve with a grand claret vintage, a fancy New World cabernet or a fine red rioja and the answer’s always the same — lamb. Unlike pork or beef, the mild, faintly gamey flavours of juicy lamb (cooked pink, please, not grey) work wonderfully well with the refined style of one of these reds, especially if it has been cellared so that the fruit, acidity and tannins have all softened with age.
However, the very pale, delicate flesh of milk-fed lamb resembles veal and is therefore a special case. Don’t overwhelm this expensive cut with a mature red: instead its shy, milky flavour is at its best accompanied by a vibrant, young, fruity beaujolais, made from the light, perfumed gamay grape.
Salt-marsh lamb is another speciality worth paying extra for. The animals have grazed on sea-breeze-cooled pastures, giving the meat a richer, deeper — and, some would say, saltier — flavour (though I’ve never managed to detect the latter). Serve the traditional choice of a mature, cedary claret with tasty salt-marsh lamb for a classic Easter Day treat.
Two general words of warning: serve your lamb as hot as you can, because congealed lamb fat coating your mouth and palate means that your tastebuds will have difficulty in picking out any of the flavours in the pricey red you have selected specially for the Easter feast. And be wary, too, of mint jelly or sauce: the vinegary taste and violent flavour make it one of the very few condiments that kill any red wine in its path. Redcurrant jelly is a pussycat by comparison.
My take:
