Salut/Hi Hunt,

le/on 4 Oct 2004 22:01:18 GMT, tu disais/you said:-

>In article >, steinau2004
says...

>>I'm trying to understand better how food and wine is paired together,
>>so I've got a few questions which I hope someone might answer:

>Pairing food and wine is an inexact science, probably closely related to
>alchemy.

I often say that although I trained as a chemist, I decided to become a
chef, as I prefer alchemy!

> That said, there are three rough thoughts on pairing:
>
>1.) flavor profiles of each, food and wine

And as you say, quite correctly later, not just the main ingredient, but the
others, and the way of preparing the dish.

To take a silly example, "beef". It has to be obvious to anyone that a
wonderful slow smoked texan barbecued brisket is NOT going to match the same
drinks as (an equally wonderful) beef bourguignon.

>2.) affinity flavors in food, which do not exist in wine, but works well
>together

and which again can have a huge effect on the match with wine. I often pan
fry duck magret (that's breast filets of duck fattened for foie gras), and
serve it with a sauce. There's a whole variety of sauces that bring out
different aspects of the flavour profile of the duck. From sharp
blackcurrant sauce, via honey, peach, and other (too IMO) sweet fruity
ingredients to a woodland sauce made by heavy reduction of dried cepes with
stock, port wine and cream. All these food pairings have their effect on
what wine will match best. In fact, my favourite way of serving duck magret
is to bake it in coarse salt. That cocentrates the "ducky" flavours in the
meat, and makes ANY sauce superfluous. And again, the match with wine is
different.

>3.) texture of food v wine, i.e. mouthfeel. A silky textured dish will often
>pair well with a silky wine.

Interesting. I'd not thought of this, and might in fact be inclined to go
for a contrasting marriage.

Although I agree wholly with the main thrust of your answer, I would have
specifically mentioned the "marriage of contrasts". The archetype of this is
(IMO) blue cheese with a sweet wine. The powerful saltiness of one combines
magically with the balance of sweetness/fruit/acidity of a very good sweet
wine.

>On to the rest of your questions. I like to pair each dish with a wine.

Yup. When we do our "normal" 5 course meal, we start with a soup (no wine
goes, normally). We then go on to a starter and usually serve a dry white
with it, though it could be a good characterful pink, or even a light red.
Then for the main course where we may go for a very big white (with lightly
sauced veal/chicken, for example) or a red, but all depends upon what aspect
of the dish one wants to bring out. Then we "finish the red with the cheese"
not really because it goes particularly well, but because people expect to
here, and if you choose the right local cheeses, the marriage isn't awful.
When peple are only paying ‚¬16 a meal, we can't afford to throw in a sweet
wine, but when it's for friends, we'll try to serve a decent sweet wine for
dessert, sometimes serving it half way through the cheese course, to give
the blue cheese something to go with.

>try and zero in for the odd entree. At home, or with pre-fixe menus, it's a
>lot easier. Only drawback is washing all the stemware!

Grin. We're getting increasingly lazy and often simply rinse out the glass
between wines, if the wines don't merit too much special treatment. Nice
though it is to drink Henri Gouges Nuits les St Georges 1990, more often I'm
serving Coteaux de Glanes or a nice red Bergerac from a wine box and they
honestly won't show much better in a better glass. So I use the standard
INAO tasting glasses, which are fine. Spiegelau do a similar one which is
significantly better.

>Without going into any specifics, this is my take on a very simplified
>version of food and wine pairing.

With which I agree fully.

--
All the Best
Ian Hoare
http://www.souvigne.com
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