42. Examining The Art of Food and Wine Pairing

Join us as we break down food and wine pairing using a real life example of a fancy, formal food and wine pairing dinner that I recently attended. 

We will look at what was on the food and wine pairing menu, what wines were paired with the dishes, and why the food and wine pairings worked harmoniously, from the perspective of a wine expert.

You will walk away from this episode with some food and wine pairing suggestions as well as insights that you can use when you want to create your own food and wine pairings at home, or while you are out at a restaurant!

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Transcript

Anshu Grover: 

[00:00:00] 

Welcome to The Wineitupanotch Podcast, a podcast where we talk about wine, life, and everything in between. My name is Anshu Grover, I'm a certified wine expert, and I love to talk to you about wine. 

Thank you so much for joining me today and welcome to episode 41 of the podcast. 

I thought we'd do something a little bit fun today.

I attended a dinner not too long ago, and it was really fantastic in terms of the way the food and the wines were paired, and I thought it might be worth breaking down the pairings, explaining what the food was, talking about what the wine was, and giving a little hint as to why I think those that were in charge of doing the food and wine pairing picked the wine that they did.

What about the wine actually pairs with the food? 

I had the idea for this episode because I often get asked a lot of questions around food and wine pairing. I think that is a really prevalent question for a lot of people. And you know what? While I firmly believe there are no rules when it comes to matching food and wine, I do also understand that mistakes can sometimes be made.

It is true that sometimes if you drink a wine with a certain item of food, it doesn't pair as well as it could, and you end up with an impact you don't want. For example, the wine may taste metallic, or it may completely overpower the food, or you may get sort of a dullness in the wine. 

And when it works, it really works.

And I think we can all think of circumstances where we've had a food and wine pairing that just really sang. Why it sang is a very personal situation, but you probably have a memory of a time where you had food and wine together and you just thought it made so much sense. 

As I said, I don't think there are any hard and fast rules, but there are, you know, some situations that work better than others.

So before I get into any formal ideas around food and wine pairing, which I think I may do in a different episode, I thought I would just break down this particular wine dinner for the interest of you, the listener, in case there's something in here that you can catch on to that may help you as you are looking to pick wines when you're at a restaurant or even pick a wine for a 

[00:02:00] 

meal that you may be having at home, or, maybe even just to reinforce what you already know and your understanding. 

So let's get into it. 

So this, as I mentioned, was a formal sit down dinner that I attended, and the meal was fairly formal, and I just share that because when I get into these dishes, these are maybe not dishes that everybody has on a daily basis, but there are some ingredients in them that I think we may be used to seeing on a menu or using in our day to day cooking. And the idea is to try to spark some connections here. 

So the meal started with a duck carpaccio. So, a raw duck dish that had truffle, reggiano, and beet on it. This was a beautiful, delicate dish. Obviously the duck was sliced very thinly. The truffle brought a real earthy note. There were little shavings of cheese and then some light slices of beet and some olive oil as a dressing as well. And this was paired with a Barolo from Piedmont from the 2019 vintage. 

Now I'm hoping that the moment I said truffle, you might've thought of Piedmont, because Piedmont is where truffles are famously, very famously, grown.

They're not the only place in the world, of course, but they have quite a truffle culture in the northwestern part of Italy that is Piedmont. So this pairing of the Barolo with the truffle makes a lot of sense. That is what you would find in the region as well. 

Having said that, let's take note of the vintage of this wine.

It was a 2019 and that means that it had started to show some evidence of progression and aging. So we're getting here into some tertiary notes like earthy, leafy notes, uh, sort of herbal tea notes, and those add complexity and depth to the wine. And so this had structure, depth, complexity. And that's why the duck aspect of the dish also worked really well because duck tends to be a richer kind of meat.

It didn't have a lot of fat on it. It was lean, but it had a real earthy element. I would almost ascribe it to like a 

[00:04:00] 

mushroom-like character, which combined with the truffle and that little bit of cheese paired beautifully with the Barolo. 

The next dish that we were served was an eggplant tart, and this consisted of eggplant, oven roasted tomato, some olives, basil….in a peppercorn phyllo with a romesco sauce. So here we've got some really interesting things going on. First of all, it is a vegetarian dish, but we've got a real roasted tomato flavor happening, some fresh chopped tomatoes, and there was olive and basil as well. And this was paired with a Syrah from the Rhone Valley. And this was a 2018 Syrah. 

You'll notice in all of the wines that I share here that the emphasis was on aged wines, really focusing on those tertiary characteristics as opposed to just a primary fruit flavor profile. 

This particular Syrah was labeled as a Syrah so it was an IGP for those that are familiar with the appellation hierarchy in France.

This was another pairing that worked beautifully. And I think the reason for that was because Syrah actually tends to have, as it ages, a bit of an olive and peppercorn note. Syrah in general, be it young or old, is known for having a black pepper profile. And then as it ages, it develops a real herbaceousness with sometimes a meaty quality and definitely kind of an olive herbaceous quality to it.

And given this dish had the earthiness, the tomatoes, the olive and the peppercorn, it worked beautifully with the Syrah. 

The next dish that we were served was a roast venison, and this was accompanied by chestnut, celeriac, swiss chard, and a beautiful blackberry rosemary jus. 

Um, I should say all the portions were fairly small!! So while all of these dishes could be a dish in and of themselves, we were served smaller portions because there were multiple courses and multiple wines! 

So going back to the roast venison, in this particular dish, we've got that real deep meat quality and then also a lovely fruitiness but also an herbaceousness coming from the 

[00:06:00] 

blackberry rosemary jus.

This was paired with a Merlot dominant blend from Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, and that was a 2016 vintage. Absolutely a beautiful wine, not perhaps a wine that many people outside of New Zealand or perhaps Australia would think of right away, but Hawke's Bay is an area that makes fantastic wines in the North Island of New Zealand. 

Now this pairing worked really well because the Merlot had depth and richness to it. It also has good tannin structure and good acidity but generally the tannins are a little smoother than say for a Cabernet Sauvignon and the fruit profile is a little bit brighter and the overall profile of the wine tends to be a little bit Smoother.

So that is a really lovely pairing with the roast venison because there are not these really super strong, powerful tannins coming in to battle against anything in the dish. You know, these more delicate flavors, such as a chestnut or celeriac, but there's enough weight there to hold up against the roast venison that smoothness and fruitiness of the Merlot pairs nicely with the blackberry and rosemary jus. 

Now, I did say this was a Merlot dominant blend, so there is Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc in the blend, which still adds that backbone and structure of a little bit more weight and heft that also is needed with meat. So, we got kind of a Bordeaux blend here, which is perfect for the roast venison.

And then lastly, we were served a barbecue lamb sirloin, which was a phenomenal dish. It had a side of creamy grits, strawberry shallot compote, and cornbread croutons. And this was paired with a Zinfandel from the Napa Valley, which was a 2021 vintage. 

Now, if you're familiar with Zinfandel, you'll know that Zinfandel tends to be a little bit higher toned in terms of the fruit quality.

It is a little bit sweeter on the palate. It has softer tannins and it's generally a really lovely wine, especially with a little bit of age. And in this case it did beautifully

 [00:08:00] 

with the barbecue aspect of the lamb sirloin and did not compete with any of the other aspects of the dish, such as the creamy grits or the compote. And in fact, because it was a strawberry shallot compote, there's again that fruity quality that we can find in a good Zinfandel, so that paired really well. 

Generally, Zinfandel with barbecue is a good match because there's a softness, a fruitiness, there's structure and full body to Zinfandel, but there's still a very approachable quality and a sweetness that pairs well with barbecue.

And then of course there was dessert, but there was actually no dessert wine. We moved over to coffee and tea with dessert. So I have nothing to say about the dessert pairing! 

But hopefully this little rundown of a dinner that I attended, which was focused on red wine - as you can tell from the rundown, there were no white wines, except there was a white wine served upon entry to the venue; but for the meal itself, there were only four red wines and four beautiful dishes - I hope this rundown helps you to decode and understand why certain wine pairings worked at this dinner that I went to, and perhaps helps you to make some decisions for the next time you are at a restaurant, or you are trying to do a wine pairing for something that you are enjoying at home or in the company of friends.

The goal here on The Wineitupanotch Podcast is always to help you feel more comfortable with wine and to entertain you along the way! 

And with that, I will bring this episode of the podcast to a close. I hope you've enjoyed it and I cannot wait to catch up with you again in the next episode!

Until then, wishing you lots of peace, love, light, and of course, great wine.

Take care. Cheers!