Knowing Your Unions
We lived on nothing for days but food and water. (WC FIELDS)
Zen and the art of food and wine matching? I think not!
Under cherry trees
Soup, the salad, fish and all
Seasoned with petals
- Haiku by Matsuo Basho)
Allow me to let you into a secret about the rules of food and wine matching. There are no fast rules. So many of the old certainties have changed since cooking now embraces a wide variety of cultural influences, and because there are so many more styles of wines being made than ever before.
“Red with meat, white with fish” has been the traditional mantra, and whilst that is still a useful starting point, it is not the whole story. Matching food and wine is really common sense science: wine will react to, and be affected by, the texture, the protein, fat content, the sweetness of food and so forth. Short of familiarising yourself with Harold McGee’s seminal book “On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen”, I suggest you seek wines (whatever colour) of sufficient quality and concentration to stand up to food. The aim is to create a simple harmony, balancing the weight of the food with the weight of the wine, so that neither overwhelms the other. Nevertheless even light wines may be paired with intensely rich and fatty dishes as long as their flavour is assertive enough. A fine German Riesling, Kabinett or Spätlese, for instance, though insubstantial in alcohol, can penetrate the fattiness of the flesh of roast goose and duck.
Diverse ingredients on the plate inevitably complicate the choice. Food is rarely about one ingredient (if it were, food and wine matching would be extremely simple); it concerns numerous combinations of flavours and textures. Different methods of cooking (grilling, steaming, frying, roasting and so forth) will alter the flavour and texture of the food, and seasoning, spicing and saucing further obfuscate the picture. An extra squeeze of lemon juice on your smoked salmon can sour your Sancerre and, taste buds beware, for in that apparently innocent garnish of watercress, lurks a quiet wine assassin. The use and overuse of salt makes tannin taste rather bitter, whilst the enriching properties of cream, butter or eggs in a recipe demand wine with extra concentration and good acidity. Chilli, ginger, sorrel and horseradish all present difficult challenges, albeit not insuperable ones.
Thai food with its abundant oppositional flavours and textures, often sweet, sour, salty, hot and cold within a single dish, requires a wine both delicate enough to dance amongst the differences and with enough personality not be overwhelmed. German Riesling (again) and top class Sauvignon from New Zealand or the Loire usually fit the bill. Other versatile grape varieties for spicy/fusion food include Chenin, Viognier, Gruner Veltliner and Pinot Gris from New Zealand or Alsace.
The Awkward Squad
Some ingredients sabotage, bruise or simply murder wine. Never pit the treasures of your cellar against this lot. However, there are combative artisan wines that will do a perfectly adequate job.
Globe artichokes and spinach, for example, leave a curious metallic taste in the mouth with wine. Red is no-no. Try a young white Rioja. Asparagus will take a smoky, unoaked or lightly oaked white like a Montagny or a Pouilly-Fumé, whilst tomatoes with their high acidity are quite tricky (try cooking them with a pinch of sugar). Drink an Italian Barbera or a Provençal red. If eating them raw a simple Sauvignon or Cotes de Gascogne might do the trick. Chocolate, perennial bane of the food-and-wine “matcherati”, has a curious affinity for sweet sherry such as PX and Muscat (Rivesaltes, Beaumes de Venise or the Aussie liqueur version); and dairy, generally, can be quite contrary, with butter, egg and cream adversely coating the palate. The real egghead here should choose a wine with plenty of zip: a mineral-dry Chablis or blanc de blancs champagne. Olives, being oily and herby, respond best to a crisp Manzanilla (or any fino sherry) or a dry rosé from the Rhone or Provence, and any of these would work equally well with oily fish such as anchovies, sardines and mackerel (or try the splendid Albarino grape and even a crisp Rueda from Spain). Vinegar, in such form as capers, chutneys and pickles, or in salad dressing, is too aggressive for most wines. Have a Cotes de Gascogne if you must. As for lemon tart – forget it!
The notion that cheese and wine are ideal partners probably stems from classic combinations such as port and Stilton, and from the farmhouse meal where freshly churned cheese is accompanied by jugs of young vintage wine. But many cheeses present textural and flavorous challenges to wine: they can be pungent, creamy, salty, high in acid and glutinous - anathema to most wines.
To achieve some kind of match you have to balance the style of the cheese with the style of the wine. Two styles of wine will rarely work: dry tannic reds and very light whites. Look for something assertive and relatively full-bodied. Sweetness, ripe fruit and good acidity are plusses. Young cheeses are high in acidity; match them with white wines high in acidity (Sauvignon, unoaked Chardonnay, dry Jurançon). Mature cheeses are complex and pungent; try complex, mature full-bodied red wines. Fortified style wines (Port, Banyuls and Recioto di Valpolicella) are good all-purpose options.
Order of wine: Although the food tends to govern the order in which we have wine, we can be more imaginative in our choices. The convention is to start light and finish heavy and graduate from white through red ending on sweet. However, with terrines and foie gras we might consider the French habit of drinking a sweet Sauternes or Jurançon. With goat’s cheese a good dry Sancerre fits the bill quite niftily. Meanwhile sweet wines also marry beautifully with blue cheeses. Rather than concluding on a heavy note with an unctuous sweet wine to accompany the pud, why not cleanse your taste buds with a glass of fizz (Champagne, Cava or Moscato d’Asti), the buzz of acidity knifing refreshingly through the cloying sugar and dairy of the dessert?
Grape varieties: Knowing the properties of a grape variety (or blend of grapes) is as important as knowing the constituents and the balance of the dish. There is, however, no such thing as the typical expression of a grape. Chablis is different to a Napa Valley Chardonnay, a Médoc bears little resemblance to a Coonawarra Cabernet, and the tropical-fruited South African Chenin is truly another country compared to the mouth-watering versions from Vouvray and Saumur. Wines from cooler climates have higher natural acidity, a necessary constituent to cut through rich sauces and heavy textures. Conversely, the easy juiciness and softer tannins of New World wines makes them particularly adaptable to trendy fusion dishes.
Regional dishes: Try regional wines with regional food - terroir create its synergy - but don’t be shy to experiment with like-minded wines from other countries – after all cooking itself is a constant dialogue between the traditional and the modern. Certain restaurants and bars play on this symbiotic relationship between the wine and food of a particular region, most notably Cellar Gascon in London’s West Smithfield which matches the rustic wines of South West France with the local terrines, sausages and smoked meats to great effect.
Our psychological disposition determines how we receive flavour. How often have we heard of “this marvellous wine I drunk in the Auvergne on a hot summer’s afternoon”, when we secretly know that the enchantment of the place and the time has pleasured our senses into an uncritical froth? Imagine sitting outside a restaurant on the banks of the Loire with the sunlight glinting off the water lazily picking at heaped plate of crayfish with a glass of the local Saumur Blanc. Does not the austerity of the wine melt away, this product of air, water and soil around you? Your mouth tingles as the acidity slides around touching every corner impressing itself on your memory buds. And you drink and you eat, and the wine seasons the food, and the food seasons the wine and the sun and the scenery seasons your mood.
Be adventurous next time you go to a restaurant or a bar. Instead of persevering with one wine throughout the meal, try different wines by the glass, experience different flavour combinations and make your own serendipitous discoveries. But don’t be too precious about it. Although the challenge of finding the elusive perfect flavour marriage can be fun, it is far more important to forget those unwritten rules and eat and drink what you feel like.