New Rules Make Dinner Easy
You’re a beginning cook who’s finally worked up the courage to cook for guests. Or maybe you’re an old hand in the kitchen, but don’t exactly know your way around the wine cellar.
In either case, deciding what wine to serve with the meal can be intimidating.
We’ve progressed from the days when wine drinkers followed the old “red wine with red meat, white wine with fish and poultry” rules. People with at least cursory wine knowledge realize there are times chicken goes better with, say, pinot noir.
Some people would even argue that there are no rules - just drink a wine you enjoy.
“The notion you can drink everything with everything has helped people relax,” says Peter Granoff, consulting sommelier for San Francisco’s Square One restaurant. “There’s only one problem. It’s not true.”
Also complicating things is the fact that a given variety of wine - chardonnay, for example - can be made in a range of styles. In the case of chardonnay, it can be big, rich and oaky; fresh and appley; or austere with a good backbone of acid.
The key to a successful pairing, Granoff and others say, is balance.
Consider intensity of flavor. The approximate level of flavor intensity “needs to be on equal footing,” Granoff says.
Take a chicken breast. You could poach it and sauce it with a little butter and perhaps some chopped basil. You could saute it and make a sauce of marsala wine and sauteed mushrooms. Or you could slather it with barbecue sauce and grill it.
“They’re all chicken, but they are completely different in the way they react with wine,” Granoff says.
He would serve the poached chicken with a fairly light white wine, perhaps an Italian pinot grigio or California sauvignon blanc. But if you served that wine with the barbecued chicken, “the wine will disappear.” For that dish, a “young, gutsy red” would be more appropriate, he says. (Further complications: Is the barbecue sauce hot? Sweet? More on those flavors later.) The sauteed chicken, he says, would go well with a richer chardonnay or a light red, such as a pinot noir.
Charlotte Strong, wife of Rodney Strong Vineyards founder Rod Strong, also looks at how heavily seasoned a dish is when pairing it with a wine.
“To say that a white wine goes with fish, well, suppose I had a big, heavy, oily fish like a salmon and I put an exotic sauce on it. That would overpower a white wine,” she says.
Strong suggests trying a red instead, perhaps a softer red such as some merlots.
What about spicy foods, like Thai or Sichuan Chinese dishes? If the foods are not searingly hot, many wine connoisseurs recommend gewurztraminer. Other possibilities are an off-dry riesling or chenin blanc or, if you prefer red, a fruity zinfandel or lightly chilled Beaujolais. With the really hot stuff, though, stick to beer.
Consider the sweetness in both the dish and the wine. The dish and wine should roughly match, Granoff says. (In the case of a dry wine, consider how fruity it is.)
The classic food-wine mismatch is wedding cake and brut champagne. “It’s god-awful,” Granoff says. “It’s a waste of money on good champagne. Champagne is inherently quite dry. Put it with something sweet and it tastes sour.”
Dessert wine should be at least as sweet as the dessert, or more so, Granoff says, because the sweetness of the food diminishes the sweetness in the wine.
Similar principles apply before you get to dessert. Granoff cites the example of a grilled lamb dish with spicy prune chutney served at Square One. He recommends a flavorful red wine without too much tannin, “a red with very plump fruit,” to complement the chutney. The wine isn’t actually sweet, he says, “but the fruit stands in and it’s perceived as sweetness on the tongue.”
As for acidic foods - salad with a vinaigrette, for example - Granoff says acid in the wine and the dressing will tend to neutralize each other. “Tart wine drunk with salad makes wine taste less acidic,” he says. Some wine experts advise using fresh citrus juices instead of vinegar in salads if you want to drink wine with them.
While cookbooks and wine shops can be helpful, the best way to learn successful pairings is trial and error. Serve two wines that are quite different with the same dish and see which you like better, Granoff says.
“Don’t obsess about getting it right,” he says. “Be aware of the fact that it does make a difference, and rather than feeling that you’ve failed, think about why it doesn’t taste good together.
“People forget that wine knowledge isn’t an overnight thing. You can’t pick up a book and read it and know exactly what to do. It’s a process of osmosis. Why not enjoy the adventure?”
xxxx Wine tastings Special activities are planned this weekend at Spokane’s six wineries for the Spring Barrel Tasting ‘95. Wineries will be open from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Friday through Sunday, serving wine and food samples and offering a look behind the scenes at the winemaking process. Participating wineries include Arbor Crest, 4705 N. Fruit Hill Road (927-9463/927-9894); Caterina, 905 N. Washington (328-5069); Latah Creek, 13030 E. Indiana (926-0164); Knipprath Cellars, 163 S. Lincoln (624-9132); Mountain Dome (in the foothills of Mount Spokane, 928-2788); and Worden (7217 W. 45th, 455-7835).