Judging from the questions we field in the Formaggio Kitchen wine corner and what we hear in the classes we regularly conduct (if you haven’t been to one, you’re missing out), the how, what and why of pairing food with wine continues to be a source of uncertainty and not a little anxiety. My sense is that a significant part of the problem is some upside down thinking about the topic in general.
Let’s start with a little history. For a very long time indeed, in the days before Europe had any significant competition from New World vineyards (North and South America, South Africa, Australia, etc.) there were two kinds of wine. The first was the sort that had made the leap to international renown.
With the exception of Port, Sherry, certain elite German Rieslings (known as Hock) and perhaps Rioja, this club was exclusively French, consisting of Burgundy, Bordeaux and Champagne. Everything outside these narrow confines — the second sort — was considered “country wine;” charming in its way, but not really to be taken seriously.
In this situation, one can imagine that pairing food and wine was a considerably simpler enterprise, its boundaries clearly marked by tradition, custom, habit. There were firm rules about what was properly served with what; a little memorization being all that was required. If you define going wrong as being caught in a pairing faux pas, it actually required a major effort to commit one.
Sherry was your apéritif, Champagne went down with the oysters, Burgundy with a roasted bird, Bordeaux with the tenderloin, Port with the Stilton. Game, set, match. I like to refer to this period — obsessed as it was by hierarchy, standardization and a kind of universality — as wine’s neo-classical era.
What put an end to it would be a long story, involving strong postwar dollars, cheap airfares and the increased mobility that put more American tourists into Europe’s provincial cities and countryside where they thrilled to regional cuisines and indigenous wines never before encountered. Soon, ambitious entrepreneurs began sussing out the best examples and bringing them home (Berkeley’s Kermit Lynch was a pioneer in this effort, among others).
Quite suddenly, the world of wine choice was expanded by some exponent. With it came a heightened awareness and appreciation of what we might call territoriality: the idea that each of the many thousands of plots that give rise to wine is somehow special, conveying a unique set of features to the wine that is sourced from it.
This focus on the minutiae of soils and sites isn’t exactly new, and has positive aspects. But it has also had the effect of fracturing the world of wine into many different, distinct and equally valuable bits. I call this, our current era, wine’s romantic period because of its fascination with diversity, particularity and exoticism. Expansive choice has made food and wine pairing seem so complex and specialized only a sommelier can manage it. It shouldn’t be this way. It doesn’t need to be.
My sense is that a significant part of the problem is a too-fussy approach to the topic in general. To help get your thinking on this topic rightside up, let’s begin with a few fundamental principles.
First, your home (where most wine and food pairing happens) is not a restaurant and the restaurant model for this kind of activity doesn’t really apply in domestic contexts. While it’s sensible to try to make the best choices you can, attempting to accomplish what a sommelier and a chef can do together in a professional dining room with a bigger budget and more resources can only be an exercise in frustration. Better, more satisfying models exist. We’ll get to that.
It’s worth remembering that in those places where wine is made, people have historically gotten along just fine by cracking open the local product with whatever’s on the table. Think about this. If you live in Beaune, chances are you’ll be drinking basic red and white Burgundy (Chardonnay or Pinot Noir), routinely, with pretty much everything.
Part of this is habit, for sure, but part is availability and loyalty to the regional economy and culture. It helps that in these places, the cuisine has grown up alonside the wine culture. They’re siblings, of a sort.
Third, the idea that compatibility between wine and food can be reduced to a series of one-to-one correspondences is nonsensical. For any given dish there are scores (hundreds?) of wine choices that will be equally agreeable. That’s because a happy pairing depends on broad character traits, not on some isolated, pinpoint consonance between what’s on the plate and what’s in the bottle.
Think about how pleased you were that night in the tapas bar on a Madrid side street, where you chose a few glasses of wine off the blackboard and drank them with multiple dishes, all different. There were some surprises; here and there an intriguing dissonance. But it was all fun and, in its own way, the experience served as a mini master class in the subject.
Fourth, pairing should never get in the way of drinking what you know (or have reason to believe) you like and avoiding what you don’t. Could anything be more obvious? No one’s enjoyment is enhanced when suborned into consuming something they consider less than pleasing. It’s good to be a little adventurous, certainly. But adventure loses its charm when it ranges into the uncomfortable or downright disagreeable.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s look at some practical approaches you can use to think about what works with what. We put them into three categories, with catchy names that make them easy to remember.
1. Blood Relations.This is shorthand for the “if they grow together, they go together” idea. This just means that if you’re serving a dish that has a strong regional identity, pair it with a wine that comes from that same region. Examples: Txakolina from around San Sebastian on Spain’s Atlantic coast with grilled prawns and fish dishes; a sturdy Cahors with a cassoulet.
2. Old Friends. This covers those pairings that share no geographic connection but enjoy a relationship long hallowed by tradition. Port and Stilton (or other blue cheese) is as good an example of this as any. The pairing dates from the early eighteenth century when the British entered into a trade relationship with Portugal to supply itself with wine when they grew wary of trading with the French, with whom they were at war.
3. Happy Hook-ups. No blood relationship or shared history here—instead, some fortuitous discovery has intervened to bring the two together. You might have encountered the pairing at a restaurant, received the recommendation from a friend, or just stumbled on it. Somehow, it just clicks. My favorite examples of this are German Riesling with boiled lobster and Champagne with popcorn. This is also where your experience in the tapas bar becomes invaluable.
Uptight about food and wine pairing? Stop fussing and start explorong.