The sommelier was right. The glass of 2005 Martin Ray “Angeline” riesling was a wonderful match for the cream-of-cauliflower soup with pumpkin oil and wild mushrooms. My husband’s 2004 Susanna Balbo malbec was equally lovely with his herb-roasted buffalo ribeye. In fact, every wine-and-food pairing suggested by Meritage chef Daniel Bruce and sommelier Jonas Atwood was fabulous. But why? Is it the body? Is it the dryness or the fruitiness, or the way it wrinkles your tongue? What do wine-savvy chefs and sommeliers mean when they say a wine is perfectly matched to a dish? What balance of flavors are they seeking to create? I’ve been to numerous wine dinners, always returning home slightly sloshed and deliriously content. But I still don’t know how sommeliers and chefs make a pairing, how they make their decisions about what works and what does not.
Should a specific wine and dish fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, bringing out hidden flavor qualities that are only unlocked in this particular combination? Or is the goal of a wine-and-food pairing to make the contrast of tastes more emphatic, more distinct? I asked some local experts: Daniel Bruce, executive chef of the Boston Harbor Hotel and the founding energy behind the Boston Wine Festival, and Jeannie Rogers, owner of Waltham’s Il Capriccio and Italian-wine-importing company Adona, and considered by many to have one of the best wine palates in the country.
Bruce, who’s likely been asked the question before, has a quick answer. “Contrast, complement, and parallel,” he says of pairing. There isn’t one definitive way to make a match, but several schools of thought. Bruce plays with all kinds of pairings, usually using more than one approach in any multi-course meal — e.g., the appetizer-and-wine pairing may be a complement, the fish entrée a parallel pairing, and the meat course a real point/counterpoint contrast. “It’s not like there’s just one perfect wine,” says Bruce. “Lots of wines can be perfect with a particular dish; they are just perfect in different ways.”
Unlike most diners — and many chefs — Bruce begins with the wine and then creates a meal around it. “Let’s say I taste blueberry, or vanilla, or some earthy, peaty, nutmeg-y tones in a wine,” he explains. “I think about a constructing a dish that might have those same flavors, or might have ingredients that pair with or cut through the flavors of the wine, or I’ll assemble a dish that will play off the wine and create a new and quirky combination. Maybe I’ll dust cocoa on a duck breast and serve it with a wine that has hints of chocolate. Or if a wine has lots of citrus, I might think about adding a hint of grated orange peel. Sometimes, a wine is so allied with the flavors of the food of its region or terroir — often true for many French and Italian wines — that I decide to stick with more traditional seasonings and preparations.”
Bruce says he never thinks of the food first: “I let the wine suggest the menu, I adjust my palate second, and then I spin the whole idea around what’s in season when I’m planning to serve the meal.” While he still uses the “contrast, complement, and parallel” analysis, it’s only a departure point for many of his pairings. “It’s hard work to come up with so many different wine dinner menus; in addition to Meritage and the hotel dining room, I do the Boston Wine Festival, the New Orleans Wine Festival, and I’m getting ready to open a restaurant in Washington, DC,” Bruce says, “so while I’m guided by these three ideas, my palate takes me all over the map. The flavors of the wine take me where I need to go.”
That might work for Bruce, but few of us civilians know enough to order a meal based on what will go with a particular Oregon pinot noir from such-and-such boutique vineyard. When a sommelier asks, “What do you usually like?,” how many of us know how to answer? Il Capriccio’s Rogers suggests that picking a wine comes down to asking yourself what you crave, what you want in your mouth, at that particular moment. “Wine isn’t as complicated as people make it seem,” she insists. “It’s all about cravings. Why does butter go with popcorn, or why does beer go with a hotdog? When two flavors work for you, they become a kind of comfort food. Wine should be like that. It isn’t a cerebral decision — it’s a sensual one. Forget rules about what makes a great match.”
In fact, Rogers believes very few pairings are “classics.” For her, the only true classic pairing is white truffles with a bottle of Barolo. “It is the ultimate wine and food combination,” she explains. “Barolo isn’t an easy wine to understand. It’s acidic, and has lots of tannins that are harsh and grip your tongue. But when you match it up with shaved white truffles served with perhaps an egg noodle, some cream, and butter, it’s the ultimate sensual experience.” Her own rule of thumb: “Think about wine the way Italians do — as a sort of digestif. How is it going to make you feel when you drink it? Are you going to feel heavy and slow, or lively and chatty?” Rogers also suggests pairing wine stylistically: simple wines with a complicated food preparation, and vice-versa. Showcase a complicated or big wine with simple food like roast chicken or a first-rate steak that won’t overshadow the wine. “Don’t waste a great wine on an overly complicated dish,” she says. “You won’t be able to appreciate it.”
Maybe pairing wine and food is like fixing up two friends on a blind date. Sometimes you think that opposites will attract. Sometimes it’s the things they have in common that make you bring them together. Occasionally, your most brilliant idea is to introduce two people who grew up in the same town, or went to the same school. The bottom line is, whether wine or romance, there’s rarely just one right choice.