Finding the perfect pair
Red wine with steak, white wine with fish, Chardonnay with lobster, Shiraz with barbecue.
What exactly is a person to do when trying to figure out what wine to serve, and what will go well with the food that is being served for dinner?
This age-old pairing of food and wine is steeped in history and has centuries of precedent and research and still remains a topic of vast discussion, controversy and frustration.
Here in Niagara we have some of the country’s best cuisine with all the resources and ingredients our chefs have access to, and they are surrounded with endless options of local wines from the lightest and driest white to bold and tannic reds.
If you were lucky, you might have had a dining experience at one of the winery restaurants in Niagara and been given clear options on what you should have with your pasta and how to bring the most out of your dessert; but how do you figure this stuff out on your own?
Sommeliers can make these choices after years of experience and the immense amount of wine knowledge needed can be overwhelming.
This has caused the average consumer to just choose the wine they love and use it to wash down their favourite salad or the low and slow charred flesh they spent all day watching on a smoker.
To each his own, but I can tell you the reality is combining wine and food can create some challenges and not all of them go together well.
Some pairings can actually take both the food and the wine down a notch as well as cause a nicely balanced dish to suffer. The expression is cause and effect, and we have all experienced it in our lives. I personally love fresh mint, and I also have a keen love for fresh squeezed orange juice; but taking that first sip of juice just after I brush my teeth is not the pleasure palace of taste I am hoping for when I start my day at breakfast.
Professionals study the lessons of pairing for years before mastering the concept, but I can offer you some advice.
The first is that the main flavour component of a dish is most likely to be the one to react with your wine and is the fundamental composition that matters. Look at food with respect to sweetness, acidity, spice and fats (and not just if it’s salmon or chicken) and you will see they can create interesting combinations with wine.
As an example, try some dry Chardonnay, but suck on a lemon first, and you will find the acidity of the lemon will mellow the acids in the wine and bring forward more fruit and aromatics.
With respect to reds, fat is a protector against tannins and bitterness. That really dry pucker you get from big red wines is from the tannin from skins and oak, and a coating of fat from rare meat or cheese can make those tannins seem smooth and groovy.
So what we really need to know is don’t just settle for the average and the normal, when you can possibly have the interesting and the improved.