“I
t’s fashion,” she flatly replied,
“The wine can be whatever you like.”
This was not the insight I was looking
for to go with my Peking duck. Years
later, I know what my irreverent tutor
meant. Researching 100-year-old menus
of the rich and famous, it became clear
that wine and food pairings are less than
set in genetic stone.
For example, menus exhumed from the
First Class dining room of the HMS
Titanic offer Beef Wellington paired
with incredibly sweet wines produced
in Bordeaux’s Sauternes region. Our
modern taste preferences, while largely
genetic (cilantro anyone?) are as
malleable as the taste in the clothes we
wear or the music that stirs us to dance.
How does one decide?
Is it all just fashion, the power of
suggestion and peer pressure? Maybe.
Play with the interactions that wine
and food make together and decide for
yourself. Here are a couple experiments
to embolden your inner wine geek:
Sweeter white wines like Ste. Michelle’s
Eroica Gold Riesling (ste-michelle.com
- $28/500ml) impress us like the sweet
wines aboard the Titanic, typically too
sweet for our current (fashion) palate
all on their own. Yet their sweetness
interacts with sweet food like equal
opposites on a teeter-totter: they both
“balance.”
Pairing sweeter wine with apple pie
or crème brûlée diminishes the sweet
impression of both.
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But to choose a contrasting flavor, like the assertive blue cheese on a cheese board,
makes the wine seem sweeter, not heavier.
Tasting flavors like these in close comparison helps decide which interaction you
prefer with sweeter styles of wine.
Just as there is a spectrum of food intensity, there is a spectrum of wine intensity,
sometimes sweet-intensity, to match it. A simple piece of fruit tames the sweet
impression of any wine.