In recent weeks, I have been astounded by the impact that food has on wine and that wine has on food. On the airplane ride back to Buenos Aires, I was lucky enough to sit in business class where there were 6 wines on the menu, none of which I had tried. Port never tasted so good as when I had it with a simple scoop of chocolate ice cream. The Pinot Noir complimented the salmon quite well, but nothing really burst. The Chablis, while really remarkable on its own, didn’t really go well with the green bean and tomato salad.
And so while the general theme of food combining is like with like, one never really knows what exact food will make a wine pop, or what exact wine will make a food pop. Looking for the pop is a new found passion of mine because not only do I find it extremely pleasurable to experience citrus burst when combining a celery-fennel-grapefruit confiture salad with Anecon Torrontés, I find the hunt for and discussion about the possibilities fascinating.
We are going to be doing several internal food and wine combining tastings to determine what exactly will work with our foods best. And I mean exactly. Not “red meat” or “aged cheese”. I want to be able to say “braised pork belly with 78% dark chocolate mole over cornmeal spaeztle” (we served this with the Cavagnaro Malbec at one of our internal tastings and I nearly fainted it was so good). That is what makes me excited about what I do these days, the search for perfection. And the oohs and ahhs and empty plates at the end of the correct combination.
Stay tuned, dear readers, for more on this subject in the coming months.
Big Daddy | 27-Feb-09 at 2:10 pm | Permalink
Food and wine are inseperable. When I studied in Paris the French though it very odd that we Americans would sit around and drink wine like a cocktail on an empty stomach. To provide a simple example from chemistry: tannins neutralize oils and fats, thus a nice cab is great with your steak (which doesn’t explain why Malbec is also good with steak, but Dan can probably explain).
Daniel | 28-Feb-09 at 12:03 pm | Permalink
Malbec has plenty of tannin too. Cabernet just happens to have more tannin in general and more rough tannin as well. It is a matter of preference what one wants with one’s steak. A good friend of mine loves Torrontes with his steak and there is virtually no tannin in whites because whites are made with the juice (must) of the grape only and not the skins which is where tannins are found.