To Pair or Not To Pair: The Big Question

 My husband likes wine, but he doesn’t love it the way that I do. 

Whereas I have seldom met a wine I didn’t enjoy tasting, he is prone to labeling my wine choices—especially those from France—as “thin and sour.”

This took me several years to figure out. He isn’t a bad taster. He often identifies subtle flavors in a wine before me. But it turns out that being able to correctly identify a wine’s characteristics isn’t necessarily the same as liking the wine!

The difference between us is that we are looking for different things.

Whereas my husband is happy as long as the wine tastes good, my approach is more analytical.  Where he wants wine that complements whatever he is eating, I want the wine to be appropriate to its region and type.  We had an example of this debate last night.  Scrounging for a late night snack, my husband threw back a handful of cinnamon-sugared almonds and washed them down with a sip of newly opened sherry.  I was horrified.  NOTHING in the literature suggests that classic dry sherry should go with cinnamon-sugared almonds!  Then I tasted it, and I was astounded to discover that the spice and sweet of cinnamon and sugar on the almonds contrasted beautifully with the dryness of the sherry.

This was an instructive moment for me because I suddenly understood why it is that a wine that critics like might not win a “people’s choice” award at a wine tasting.

It turns out that neither I nor my husband has a monopoly on being “right” when it comes to our individual approaches to wine.  Like most people, he is looking for a good experience when he sips the wine—the kind that causes wineries to sell more cases to casual sippers.  I, on the other hand, am looking for the wine that will behave in the way it is expected to behave and can thus be recommended as reliable in wine columns and by wine stewards and retailers, who through their endorsement, will likewise increase wine sales.

In the end, a good wine is a complex mixture of taste AND predictability.  And just to make it more confusing, wine is a very complex beverage that can change, depending on whether one sips it as a stand-alone beverage or eats a few cinnamon-sugared almonds with it.

The point of all this is to encourage you, dear readers, not to judge a wine based on one tasting.  If you encounter a wine you think you hate, don’t automatically pour the rest down the drain.  Try changing the experience by adding or taking away different foods and see if the wine grows on you.

With that in mind, here are a few guidelines to keep in mind when trying to pair wine and food.  In honor of summer, the list is heavy on white wines; I might revisit the subject when we get to fall and my mind turns to red wines again.

Match wines from a particular region with the food from that region.  Think Oregon pinot noir to accompany Oregon salmon.  Or try an Italian Chianti to match a tomato sauce pasta.  Serving game?  Try French Rhone Valley wines.  Turns out the French in that region like game about as much as the hunting crowd from Prineville, and their wines reflect it!

If you don’t know what else to do, try Sauvignon Blanc.  It is the most versatile wine out there.  Great by itself, especially in hot weather, it’s also a food-friendly wine.  In fact, it’s the only wine I have found that consistently tastes good with salad.  (Lettuce is actually one of the most difficult foods to pair with wine!)

Drinking Cabernet Sauvignon?  Definitely consider it as a candidate to accompany food – and not just any food.  Cabernet and cabernet blends (often labeled as “claret” or “meritage”) are notoriously tannic and are therefore best balanced with food.  A nice steak, especially one that’s not too well done, should do the trick.

Chardonnay is tricky.  Sometimes it’s a stand-alone sipper. Sometimes it’s a food wine. Sometimes it’s both.  You might find the answer on the label, or you can ask an expert.  (My e-mail is listed below!)  And when all else fails, there’s always trial and error.

Sparkling wines are one of the most overlooked options when you need a versatile wine.  Like sauvignon blanc, sparkling wines have quite a bit of acid.  The acid makes the wine crisp and refreshing – the perfect sipper.  But the acidity also matches with a lot of food. It can cut a cream sauce or stand up to the acid in a tomato or vinegar-based food.  One of my personal favorite food-wine pairings stories involved an inexpensive $10 sparkling wine that I opened out of desperation (no obvious match came to mind) to pair with spicy chicken enchiladas.  It was a wonderful combination!

Wine is like marriage in a lot of ways.  You can read all the manuals in the world about the attributes to look for in a “perfect spouse” or a “perfect wine.”  Often, the manuals are based on solid advice gathered through hard-earned experience by experts in the field.  But pairings of couples and wines have a funny logic all their own sometimes:  your taste may not be the experts’, and their tastes may not be yours.  So read all the advice books you can, but be prepared to fall in love with something you never thought would rock your world!