Drinking Red Wine In The Butchery

by Kyle Snow

One of the best things about eating beef is how well it pairs with red wine. This is the direction that led me to become a red wine drinker; I learned about beef first followed by red wine. In the maturation of beef, we learn that it can pair with other matured foods such as cheese and wine, which are themselves matured. If you want to turn a tough, average cut into a tasty ‘matured’ cut, you can also marinate it overnight in red wine to break the muscle fibres and tenderise the meat. When pairing wines with beef, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. One should consider the texture of each different cut of beef, as well as the cooking method and seasoning used. On the primal cuts, I would start with a fillet as the softest, pairing it with my favourites of Pinotage or Malbec. These two can also extend further onto the next softest steak, which is a Sirloin, or New York Strip as our American friends call it. With these two steaks being the softest, it is important to remember with a pairing that a T-Bone (or porterhouse) is not actually a heavy steak to pair, as it is essentially a Sirloin and Fillet on either side of a T-shaped bone. I would then pair Rib-eye and Rump with a bolder wine than the others because of their beefier flavour.

Understanding each cut of beef is the first step to getting the pairing right. A reliable rule to gauging the texture of the cut is to think about where on the cow the cut comes from and how much movement each cut does. The closer we get to the hoof or horn of the cow, the more muscle movement the cut does, and therefore the stronger beefy flavour you will find, the bolder the pairing.

The shin and neck are great slow cooking cuts and that’s where you should be cooking with red wine. What I like to do with stews and roasts like these is to pair them with a regional wine, because people have been pairing their beef and wine for a while, so I go for the tried and tested approach. For example, I recently cooked a range of dishes from a breed of cow from Italy called Fasona or Piedmontese. We paired them with regional Italian wines such as Chianti, Amarone, and Barolo. Not only does this feel more authentic but it is also a great way to explore different regional wine varieties. Lastly, from the grill, I believe in the importance of which seasoning is used on your steak. If you enjoy pepper on your steak then you should try a similar wine with a peppery flavour to compliment the meat, like a Shiraz or Syrah. A good steak house should have a well-paired wine as their house wine according to the seasoning used on their grill, so this is often a good place to start on the wine menu and work your way to different wine and beef combinations until you find the one you like.