Playing with your antisocial food
Like alcoholic dinner guests, there are foods that bring their personal problems to the table. They might be perfectly charming in isolation, but in the presence of drink, asking them to play nicely with others leads to a night of acrimony and shattered crockery.
Okay, maybe I took that comparison a little too far. The point is, while most foods find happy accord with a wide range of wines, some just don’t. Or at least, that’s their reputation. So in a rare display of actual service journalism (don’t get used to it), here’s some help with a baker’s halfdozen of the most problematic dishes.
For all the asparagus we eat, it’s surprisingly difficult to match those spears with wine. (And I think we all agree that the Spears should probably avoid alcohol.) The white kind, dominant in Europe but much less popular here, is an excellent foil for dry riesling (from Alsace, Austria, sometimes Germany) and dry muscat (pretty much just Alsace). The green spears work with riesling but are also amenable to grüner veltliner and dry muscat, or chenin blanc from the Loire Valley (Savennières, dry Vouvray) for a more delicate partner. And then there’s Quincy, a Loire sauvignon blanc that’s often derided for tasting like fermented asparagus. You won’t see much of it on local shelves, but if you do, give it a shot.
Other green vegetables seem happy with grüner and chenin, as well as sauvignon blanc from the Loire’s Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé,and Menetou-Salon. New Zealand works too. Grüner veltliner is an excellent choice, even more so than with asparagus. But note: all these wines are white. If a red must be served, it should be the lighter-styled cabernet francs of the Loire. Rather than brawny Chinon or Bourgueil, look to Saumur or Saumur-Champigny, reds labeled cabernet from the Touraine, or the occasional outlier from farther east (which will be labeled Vin de Pays du Jardin de la France). These reds are even more welcome when vegetables turn somewhat bitter, like kale, beet greens, or fiddleheads, or Jennifer Aniston.
And that brings us to salads. If there’s a vinaigrette, forget the wine (if you must have both, replace the vinegar with citrus juice, or better yet, a few drops of the wine you’re serving). Otherwise, the match depends on the ingredients. For pure leaves, see the previous entry. If there’s fruit, consider something offdry like German riesling kabinett, or bubbly and fun moscato d’Asti. Once fish and meat start entering the picture, their usual matches apply, except that it’s best to lighten the wine a step or two. In other words, if you’d choose a big California cabernet sauvignon with steak, think about something Old World (or made from cabernet franc) with steak salad. If you like pinot noir with your salmon, try gamay (Beaujolais or domestic) with salmon salad. And so on.
Spicy food comes in many forms, so precise matches are difficult to provide ahead of time. Really spicy food just doesn’t go with wine; choose beer, lassi, or something else heatcombating. With a milder burn, the wine keys are low alcohol (spice emphasizes it) and residual sugar (which counteracts heat). That’s German riesling again — kabinett, spätlese, or auslese — but also other German whites like silvaner, grauburgunder (pinot gris), weissburgunder (pinot blanc), and muskateller (muscat). A frothy off-dry, pink wine like Bugey Cerdon or brachetto d’Acqui also works, as does Lambrusco, a bubbly red from Italy — the off-dry kind.
The difficulty with soup isn’t flavors, it’s temperature: cool wine is a problematic contrast with hot liquid. But Spain brings us the solution — Sherry and/or Montilla-Moriles. I’m not quite sure why this works, but it does. Use the drier styles (fino, amontillado, palo cortado, or manzanilla) for light soups, and oloroso for bigger, richer versions.
There’s controversy about eggs, which some find the perfect foil for wine, but others find an absolute disaster. Obviously, any accompaniments play a major role in wine choice, but for the unadorned ova, choose the most delicate wine you can find, whether white, pink, or red. On the pale side, that might mean chenin blanc (Vouvray and Montlouis) or dry muscat, or a wine with a bit of a pinkish blush, like a rosato from Northern Italy; among reds, it pretty much means gamay, blaufränkisch from Austria, or the very lightest of red Burgundies.
And finally, the wine-killer: artichokes. There’s apparently a chemical involved; I’ve almost never had a truly excellent match. Either the artichokes turn sugary or the wine becomes deformed and sickly. One exception is Bandol rosé. It’s one of the priciest pinks you’ll ever encounter, but it’s all I’ve got. And your crockery will thank you.
