The Soul of Wine PairingBy Scott Frank on 7.18.2006 |
Recently, the weather in Portland turned the corner from the fickle, quasi-Spring of April and May to proper long days of heat and sun. Every year when that happens I put together a mix of "Summer Tunes" – the kind that just ooze the feeling of driving around with the windows down and the stereo up, the kind that make you want to dance barefooted in the lawn. For some reason, Roy Ayers' "Everybody Loves the Sunshine" makes it onto to nearly every mix, every year. For me, it's synonymous with summer. It's sort of a musical Punxsutawney Phil—when it gets pulled out and stays out it's officially summer.
Once I get the music sorted out the next priority is breaking out the wines that capture the feeling of warm weather and sunshine. As indispensable as Kool & The Gang's "Summer Madness" is to any seasonal soundtrack, the same is true of Moscato D'Asti's place on the seasonal table. "Spring-time in a bottle" as my old mentor, Charlie used to say. He couldn't be more right. It's the wine equivalent of a budding flower dotted with dew. The freshness and focused fruitiness of Moscato, along with its juvenile and off-handed effervescence just seems to calibrate me with the clockwork of spring. (Check out Rivetti or Perrone for a proper introduction.)
Like the songs we strongly associate with, wines can become forever attached to moments, experiences and special occasions. They can become integral pieces in the way we mark the changing seasons, the passing of milestones or rituals of everyday life. And whether they're sublime or absurd is rather beside the point. Roy Ayers literally is sunshine for me, just as Barbaresco and frozen pizza literally were Valentine's Day for a former girlfriend and me.
See, one Valentine's Day she insisted she didn't want to make a "big deal" about it and that we should just stay in. (Right. Last time I believe that.) About an hour before I got off work, she called and said she wanted to go out for dinner after all. Needless to say, every place in town was booked, but we managed to find a casual but quality establishment willing to try and squeeze us in. I wanted to at least treat ourselves to a decent bottle of wine, so I brought along a bottle of Gigi Bianco 1996 Barbaresco and we proceeded to wait. And wait. And wait so long we finally gave up on the restaurant, grabbed a movie and a frozen pizza and headed home. However, we'd gotten ourselves so worked up over the Barbaresco we decided to open it anyway. To make a long story short, the wine made the night. Saved it, actually. What would have been a decided disappointment instead became a ritual we repeated every Valentine's Day – Frozen Pizza and Barbaresco.
Sometimes my associations with wine have more to do with a specific person than with an occasion. I have a friend who used to refuse to drink white wine. We all have this friend, I'm sure. One night she came over for a dinner party where I served enchiladas verde stuffed with mashed purple potatoes, corn and green chilies. She didn't want to drink margaritas like the rest of us and requested a glass of wine. All I had was Grüner Veltliner, so I poured her a glass against her ardent protests. I convinced her to try it and she proceeded to have a wine moment. Believe it or not, the wine paired perfectly with the enchiladas and she couldn't get enough of it. So now, every time I get together with this friend I bring along a different bottle of Grüner to drink and it adds another layer of meaning to our time together.
As a wine steward one of the most frequent questions I hear is, "What would you pair this with?" Quite often the food they're serving isn't nearly as important as the people they're spending the time with or even the event itself. A "safe bet" recommendation may get them by but probably won't make for a memorable wine pairing. I like to pick distinctive or slightly unusual wines in this instance, such as Malbec from France's Touraine region with cheeseburgers. Listen, you can always get a good recommendation for food pairings, and left to your own devices you'll most likely be OK if you just drink what you really like. Of course, some pairings are more successful than others, but the odds of it being a disaster are slim. So I like to encourage people to pair wines themselves, and to think about the wines as components in an overall experience.
Ultimately, the most important wine pairing has little to do with wine. It's the people that we share the wine with. I often hear customers complain, "I've got this great bottle of wine I've been sitting on for ages and I'm waiting for a special occasion so I can drink it." My response is always, "Open the wine and it will be a special occasion." How many of us distinctly remember the times we've tasted really great wine? Not just the wine, but whom we were with and where we were at. Great wine, like music, has a way of crystallizing emotion and experience in our memory. So keep a keen eye out for moments you'd like to savor or cement, dust off that special bottle and don't give a second thought to popping that cork.
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