Food and Wine Pairings: Heavyweights Stick Together

After grabbing the fryer and waltzing toward the checkout counter, you suddenly get a yen for wine to go with the bird you’re going to prepare in an hour. But you’re not sure what wine will work with the chicken . . . partly because you haven’t yet decided exactly how it will be fixed.

Matching the right wine with the food you’ve already decided to cook isn’t easy, especially if you read those rule books that say you must match up certain flavors. And, of course, those who say, “Drink anything you damn well please with any food” are simply ostriches who ignore the facts.

One of those facts is that the wrong wine/food pairing will often make either the food or the wine taste bizarre with each other, and in some cases the taste of both suffers. Try a Cabernet with sole Veronique and see whether either of them tastes any good. And I’ve had Pinot Noirs that are fine with roast beef but turn tinny and hot with shellfish.

*

The ancient saw “red wine with meat, white wine with fish” isn’t a bad start to the discussion--until someone suggests two of my favorite matches--onion-crusted seared salmon with Pinot Noir and baked veal chop with Riesling. It’s at that point that the whole notion of firm rules gets trashed.

When pairing wine and food, people tend to focus on taste. But in the numerous blind wine tastings I do, when a handful of wines are otherwise quite similar in overall quality, the one thing that ranks them for me is usually their texture, or weight. The wine with the friendliest texture is usually the one I want to match with food.

*

I mentioned this theory of texture to Rozanne Gold, consulting chef of New York’s Rainbow Room. “I find the whole issue of body and weight in a wine and food combination fascinating and paramount to satisfaction,” she replied. “The way we eat these days, there is a greater number of wines that go with food, because in the 1990s we’re eating a lot of foods with very punctuated flavors, like bursts of a chile pepper or a squeeze of citrus.

“In the past, we used to eat a lot more foods that were bound with sauces--butter, cream, demi-glace.”

She said that as our cooking moves toward lighter-weight foods, our wine choices should move in the same direction.

*

Gold, who acts as Dunnewood Vineyards’ culinary counselor and who develops food and wine programs for restaurants, gave a good example of misreading the “red with meat” edict of the past:

“What would you serve with a fine piece of sirloin?” she asked. Without waiting for a response, she replied: “If you seared it lightly and served it over roasted peppers, it’s a lighter-bodied dish, which calls for a lighter-bodied wine like Pinot Noir or Beaujolais. Another person might prepare it with a rich demi-glace, and that dish has more weight so it calls for a big, rich red wine, such as Cabernet or Syrah.

*

“But now, think of how we’re cooking these days. Let’s add cilantro, chile peppers, garlic, hoisin sauce and a splash of Sherry. Now, this dish calls for something different; maybe a white wine would work better,” but typically not a Chardonnay because its oak aging could add confusion to the palate.

The temperature of the foods is another element in dictating how we pair wines with them. Gold said that many cultures pair a hot dish with a cold one on the same plate--usually one dish is lean and the other more fatty.

“In France, they serve steak tartare with pommes frites ; in Scandinavia, you get gravad lax with hot creamed potatoes.” In the former case, Gold would choose a light red wine such as Merlot; in the latter case, a rich white like Chardonnay.

Both the intense flavor and light weight of something like grilled wild mushrooms, such as portobellos or porcini, can pose problems for wine pairing. Gold suggested either a Nebbiolo, matching the woodsy flavors, or a robust Chardonnay, a counterpoint to the delicate texture of the mushroom.

In general, think of the amount of fat a dish has. The more fat, the heavier the wine can be. It’s no wonder that Prof. George Saintsbury, the British aristocrat who wrote of great dinners he staged, paired mutton one night with a Hermitage and the next time with an old Bordeaux. The flavors of the wines were not similar; what was being matched was the texture of the mutton and the weight of the wine.

Another key: If a dish is very spicy, you need a wine that cools the tongue, so Riesling or a very light Pinot Gris would work.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Splurge of the Week

1991 Bricco dell’Uccellone, Giacomo Bologna ($40)-- There may be no greater overachievers than the late Giacomo Bologna’s Barbera grapes from a steep hillside vineyard outside the Piedmont village of Rochetta-Tanaro. Never has Barbera been made more impressively, with a powerful aroma of sour cherry and chocolate with hints of earth and violets. It’s a huge, mouth-filling wine that is perfect with game or flavorful cheeses. Gambero Rosso, the Italian wine magazine, called the wine “the finest Bricco dell’Uccellone ever produced.” This despite it being from a vintage that didn’t receive much acclaim. The wine’s plain label and lack of publicity has slowed its sales in the past, and buyers tend to be only those people in the know. This vintage is going fast, however.

Splurge of the Week