5 minute read
How to Run a Food & Wine
Wine Flights & DEGUSTATIONS
Now that our global political leaders have so neatly solved the problems of refugees, climate change, and smartphone battery life, humankind can finally - in a calm and spiritually uplifting manner - turn its attention to the biggest question in the universe. How to match wine and food.
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WORDS BEN CANAIDER
If you’d like to participate in this endeavour, the following advice has been put together by a committee I sit on in the U.N. It takes wine beyond mere varietal understanding, per se. Indeed, this template expects you to know the basic wine secrets - what pinot noir and cabernet and chardonnay et al. are supposed to smell and taste like when they are true to varietal.
The important part in taking this next step - understanding the food and wine matching matrix - is to understand what the wrong food with the wrong wine (or vice versa) can do. To luncheons. To individuals. To civilisations. To basic human dignity.
The approach, or technique, requires a host or hostess to match a flight of wines with a degustation menu. Wine is sipped alongside morsels of food being eaten. The aim is to establish well-worn and time-honoured food and wine pairings that are bliss. A marriage made in Heaven. Along the way, participants also get to taste the wrong combinations. They’ll be chastised occasionally, of course; but they’ll be ultimately improved.
You will need one sparkling white wine, three white wines, and three red wines. You’ll also need seven different degustation dishes.
I do it this way.
Wine: Champagne, riesling, sauvignon blanc, chardonnay, pinot noir, grenache, cabernet sauvignon. The only trick here is to make sure all of the wines are true to variety; if you buy such wines from regions that are known to produce them well (sauvignon blanc from Marlborough, for instance) you will improve the results.
Food: oysters natural, country terrine, goat’s cheese, camembert cheese, baked salmon, mild chicken curry, a simple butcher’s BBQ sausage, cooked in the oven (which also holds the salmon and the curry).
The system you then employ couldn’t be easier. Set seven standard glasses at each participant’s place, at the table. Number each glass with a little round sticker, one through to seven. Pour the wines in the above mentioned order, starting with Champagne in number one and cabernet sauvignon in number seven. Then lay out the seven degustation dishes in front of the seven wines, in the order described above, pairing the Champagne with the oyster and the cabernet with the BBQ sausage. For service, I use coffee saucers and supply but one entree fork. These plates shouldn’t need any numbering or explanation. Really, if someone can’t tell the difference between a bit of salmon and camembert, it’s time they audition for I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here.
What you do next is DEP. Demonstrate. Explain. Perform. Take a sip of the Champagne and then down the oyster. Explain the match is all about the acidity in the wine and the sea-saltiness of the oyster. The saltiness cancels out the acidity, making both oysters and Champagne natural partners. Ask your victims to now try this. If any of them disagree with the immutability of this truism, ask them to now all try this: take a sip of the Champagne and a small bite of the BBQ sausage, making sure to leave some behind… Champagne’s acidity alone cannot defeat - or more importantly, partner - the sausage’s fattiness. But the cabernet will.
So now try the cabernet with the sausage. Voilà. The tannic gruffness in the cabernet needs the fats in the sausage and balances everything out.
The citric acidity and fruit purity of the riesling cuts through the denseness and strong flavour of the terrine. The pungency of the goat’s cheese and the powerful aromatics of the sauvignon blanc don’t so much love each other but deserve each other. The creamy, dairy, cheesy mouth-filling texture and flavour of the camembert is a natural foil for chardonnay’s inimitable combination of acidity and more buttery fruit flavours. Pinot noir’s combination of summer berries, herbs, rhubarb and cranberry (all held firm and tense by a line of acid) melt through the omega-3 fats of the salmon and add nuances to the fish’s underlying earthiness. Grenache’s fruity-tuity juiciness and bright red berry flavours effortlessly overcome the bitterness and bite of any curry flavour - in fact, a curry helps tone down grenache’s fruit-bomb tendencies. And the humble fats in a humble butcher’s BBQ sausage make the cabernet and its proud tannins the king that the variety is.
Of course, any time that anyone runs this sort of wine and food flight there will be matches that do blur and seem as valid as those I’ve just set as law. But slight variability and accommodation to such tastes doesn’t detract from the tasting’s overarching framework: that certain qualities in wine - whether they be tannins, acids, or fruit sweetness - are best served by foods with complementary flavours - saltiness, bitterness, fattiness, and so on. Sometimes foods and wines compare favourably and happily; at other times it takes a contrast to bring out the best. Even a cynic will walk away from this tasting having learned something, and surely that, for you, is reward enough.
