Have we become too "matchy"?

[Fat Guy]

Two comments on a recent topic, plus some recent restaurant experiences, got me wondering.

On a topic about wine for prime rib, markk wrote: "Indeed, a big wine like a Zinfandel might go well with the crusty end-cuts of a prime rib, but if you're going to have a subtly flavored rare, or medium rare inner slice, a subtle, delicate red wine would be the better choice . . ."

On the same topic, rich commented: "I can think of no better wine to serve with turkey than a zin. I don't think a pinot stands up to the dark meat at all, though I do think it works well with the breast."

Those commets represent the first time I can remember folks suggesting that a different wine might be best for two different parts of the same roast.

In the restaurant world, of course, the notion of "wine pairings" -- where, for example, you get a different wine by the glass with every course of a tasting menu -- has become very popular. There is also, of course, a lot of attention devoted to pairings in the literature: long lists of what wines go best with what foods. And I was recently at a preview dinner for an international competition where the victor will be the team that creates the best match of food and sherry.

Now, don't get me wrong. I enjoy a great wine pairing as much as the next guy. But have we perhaps gotten a bit carried away here? The wine I drink with thigh meat isn't good enough to drink with breast meat; my wine is only fit to be served with the end cut of the prime rib; I need a different wine (or two) with every single course of my meal? What's next? Five little glasses with each course: drink this one with the interior meat, this one with the crusty edges, this one with the starch, this one with the veg and this one here with the espuma?

What ever happened to just drinking a bottle or two of wine with a meal? I mean, back in the day, you just chose a bottle of wine to drink with your meal. End of story. For a bigger deal meal, you chose a white and a red and at some point in the meal you switched from white to red.

No, if you just order a bottle of wine and drink it throughout your meal, you don't get the best, most exact, internationally competition-worthy pairing with every bite of food. But maybe you get some other pleasures: you get to see how the same wine tastes with different foods, and you get to experience the evolution of the wine as it breathes throughout the meal. You really get to know that bottle. It's a commitment, not a dalliance. Not to mention, you may stave off the onset of obsessive-compulsive wine disorder for one more day.

[docsconz]

Steven, your point is a good one, but must the options be mutually exclusive? If I am at home or at a more traditional restaurant I will tend to be more bottle oriented, but if I am at an adventurous tasting-menu oriented place known for their pairings as well as the food I tend to indulge with that. Both approaches have their places and value.

[maggiethecat]

Steven, there are the oenos of the world who live to match and pair and swirl and yack about the subtleties, and then there folks like us who are happy with a couple of bottles of good wine with a holiday dinner, or any dinner.

Asking a serious wine person to curb her enthusiam and molecular matching tendencies is like asking the NHL to ban slashing -- it ain't gonna happen. We can enjoy her expertise at her house, or when she's taking us out to dine, but we don't have to march in her Manolos. I enjoy that passion and o/c wine behaviour in others, but never feel that I have to emulate it. For one, I can't afford it.

[Fat Guy]

John, I'm not necessarily convinced that avant-garde restaurants are better candidates for course-by-course pairings than reqular restaurants. I mean, that has certainly become the conventional wisdom (to the extent that there can be a conventional wisdom of the avant garde) and the folks at Alinea are particularly committed to that position, but what do they do at El Bulli? Do they even offer course-by-course pairings? I'm not sure I recall ever seeing such pairings offered in a top European restaurant. Is it an American thing?

I think there are plenty of versatile whites that will carry through an avant-garde tasting menu. And what do the wine pairings cost at Alinea? A hundred bucks? That means if you have two people you can pick a $200 bottle of wine or two $100 bottles of wine on the same budget. I assume most of the wines they use for the pairings come from bottles that, as bottles, would be at a much lower price point. So for my $200 maybe I'd be happier sipping Clos Sainte-Hune throughout the whole meal.

[Shalmanese]

It depends on what you can get away with I guess. Wine comes in a somewhat inconveniently large serving size. Often the only reason you're offering two wines with the meal is because your group can only drink two bottles worth of wine. So when you have a slightly specialer occasion when you're doing more courses for more people, it can be fun to play around with per course pairings or something similar.

I see it as more something fun because you don't get to do it often.

[Fat Guy]

The wine-tasting dinner, where you taste a different wine with each course, is a time-honored tradition. But when did it become mandatory? The Europeans who make much of the world's greatest food and wine don't seem to go in for it very much, do they? Yet, in America, you have a restaurant like Alinea where they start arguing the point right on the menu -- you must have pairings, all other approaches will lead to disappointment -- and you have people saying the same wine won't do for a turkey's breast and thigh, or the end and middle of prime rib roast.

Which gets back to my question: have we become too matchy? Nobody is saying it's bad to match food with wine, but perhaps we've gotten a bit carried away. I mean, serving good wines by the glass was no doubt an innovation meant to address the situation where Americans no longer drink a whole bottle of red and a whole bottle of white with a meal, particularly lunch. But we seem to have taken it to an extreme that threatens to lose sight of some of the basic pleasures of drinking wine with a meal.

[Worldly]

Thanks for the topic - seems to me we've struck (or passed the point) where our ability to match exceeds the wisdom of doing so. It's not entirely unreasonable, as an intellectual exercise at least, to argue that dark and light meat on a turkey are sufficiently different in flavour and texture to warrant different wine choices.

On the other hand, I would expect the choice of wine to reflect the plating of the food. Might the bird not equally be served by the chef as different food courses? In a family style presentation we often get a variety of food as a course or on a single platter, and placing multiple wines at once for guests to switch between would be, at least to me, a bit of an exercise. So one wine, the best I can choose to reconcile and reflect the course, is the way I would go.

If the chef is dissembling courses quite finely, then selecting a wine for each (certainly by the glass or less) can provide a more complementary experience, but I would say perhaps not an everyday one.

Edited January 1, 2007 by Worldly (log)

[pedro]

John, I'm not necessarily convinced that avant-garde restaurants are better candidates for course-by-course pairings than reqular restaurants. I mean, that has certainly become the conventional wisdom (to the extent that there can be a conventional wisdom of the avant garde) and the folks at Alinea are particularly committed to that position, but what do they do at El Bulli? Do they even offer course-by-course pairings? I'm not sure I recall ever seeing such pairings offered in a top European restaurant. Is it an American thing?

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elBulli, by explicit and conscious decision of Juli Soler --Adrià's partner and FOH "master"-- don't offer wine pairing. His point is that going to elBulli implies conforming to many "restrictions": you plan it for months, you can't choose what you're going to eat, you receive guidelines on how to eat certain dishes. So, he believes that imposing also what you should drink would be a little too much. Sure, you would also have the option of choosing from the list, but seriously, how many patrons would go the pairing way confronted with a cuisine like elBulli's? I prefer it how it is: if you go there with a party of 5 or 6, you may end up tasting 4 or 5 different bottles you choose from their reasonably priced list. No reds the last two times.

On a broader perspective, few restaurants in Spain offer that possibility. Josep aka Pitu Roca, from El Celler de Can Roca, will certainly do it if you ask him but I tend to think that it's not something listed in the menu.

The expertise needed to create successful pairings outside the realm of more traditional cuisines --or new pairings in that scope-- is quite high. Extremely high, I'd argue. Just a handful of sommeliers out there would succeed. So, yes, I rather go the two / three bottles way in most cases.

Edited January 1, 2007 by pedro (log)

[Andy Lynes]

The Europeans who make much of the world's greatest food and wine don't seem to go in for it very much, do they?

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Its very common in high end UK restaurants:

Pied a Terre

The Fat Duck offers "a selection of wines by the glass to accompany this (tasting) menu is available at £90 per person. Or an alternative selection at £295 per person (minimum of two people).

The Capital

Le Gavroche

Restaurant Sat Bains

[Fat Guy]

It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the same is true of Australia, and of course it happens plenty in Canada -- the phenomenon could easily be something that runs as a thread through the Anglo world (in this instance I wasn't considering the UK to be European). But I wonder why.

[rich]

Interesting topic Steve.

I did say (and still do believe) that a Pinot (the more deilcate version I favor) goes better with the white meat of the turkey, but doesn't hold well with the dark. Now I'm not suggesting we always have two different wines with the same roast, but I am saying two bottles of wine at the table for people who enjoy different parts of the bird is possible.

The white and dark meat of a turkey taste entirely different. I think a Zin goes very well with both. It has the balance to handle the white and the power to handle the dark. However, if someone doesn't eat dark meat turkey they may want to pour a Pinot, which handles that part of the bird very well.

There aren't many meats where the white, dark or various parts taste and look so different as with poultry (especially chicken and turkey), so why not serve two different wines? (I understand various parts of every animal taste different, but I think it's more exaggerated with C&T. i.e. You would probably want a different style wine when having a tenderloin or porterhouse - yet it comes from the same cow and the general taste of the beef is similar, just not as pronounced in the filet.)

But the the beef example is different because it's rare a restaurant will serve the same diner a strip steak and a tenderloin at the same meal. Whereas, it's more common to serve a whole or half chicken or both white and dark meat turkey to the same diner at the same meal.

I made a goose last evening and that meat is all dark and the taste of the breast, thigh, leg isn't that different so one type of wine was fine.

Saying all that, I think if restaurants are going to serve a bird where the parts taste so different, they should serve them as separate courses IF they are including a wine pairing as part of ther meal.

Edited January 1, 2007 by rich (log)

[docsconz]

I still don't understand the either/or choice that seems to be implied in this topic. I find that wine pairings work very nicely and truly complement the meal at a restaurant such as Alinea at which multiple small courses are served and at which the staff is geared towards and expert at matching wines with the courses. There is definite value added to being able to try these wines that complement the specific course. Alinea isn't serving dreck when they do this either. Nevertheless, for those who prefer to order by the bottle, the option remains with an outstanding list.

If I am with a large group (6 or more), ordering by the bottle at most restaurants clearly makes more sense, especially if the number of courses is relatively limited. If I am ordering off the menu a total of say, five courses, or less and the platings are larger, it also makes sense to order by the bottle especially if the course selections lend themselves to specific types of wine. Sometimes though, when ordering off the menu and everyone is ordering all over the board, specific course pairings make more sense if offered. Personally, I'm happy that it is an option at many if not most fine-dining restaurants, even if I do not always avail myself of the opportunity.

[Fat Guy]

John, I'm not sure where you're getting an "either or" vibe from. To the extent I can control what vibe I put out, what I'm trying to radiate is the "gone too far" vibe. I enjoy course-by-course wine pairings on occasion. But take a look at the pushy language you encounter when you go to the wine page on Alinea's website:

Our experience has been that the enjoyment of Chef Achatz’ cuisine is enhanced by the carefully selected wine pairings we have the luxury of exploring. Alinea’s cuisine is a fairly complex one, and while perhaps presenting some challenges in the search for compelling matches, the rewards of discovering and having the opportunity to share such synergies are significant. Every change of menu leads us to different corners of the wine-producing regions of several continents in search of some of world’s most fascinating wines. We are proud of the added layer of fascination that our efforts bring to the dining experience at Alinea. We find that the format of the menus and the distinct characteristics of the individual dishes inspire such a paired tasting of wines, and that efforts to choose wines to balance across numerous courses are often less satisfying in their result. We encourage our diners to place themselves in the hands of our talented crew of Sommeliers, and enjoy a progression of wines that truly complements the artistry of our culinary team.

You're not even allowed to see the list until you read that. Then, when you do click to see the list, they take another run at you:

Our aim in assembling a wine cellar and list of wines is in large part an extension of this broader philosophy. As we succeed in representing a depth of selection of some of the world’s greatest wine styles and regions, we are able to offer our guests the luxury of selecting, or allowing us to recommend, a special bottle or bottles to feature as a particular enhancement to the evening’s selected pairings. Please note that while we will attempt to keep this list updated, things do change frequently and we cannot guarantee availability and/or pricing of wines as posted on the website.

So they still lean on you to do the pairings, even if you order bottles. To me, that's a "gone too far" situation. Especially when you consider that El Bulli itself just wants you to order some bottles of wine.

Rich, sorry to make an example of you. I don't think you're really all that crazy. I was mostly just remarking on the coincidence of your comments and markk's on the same topic. One comment, though. Restaurants serve strip and tenderloin together all the time. It's called a porterhouse. And there are plenty of combination dishes that offer two or three cuts of beef together, for example the combination of a steak-type cut and a braised cut is commonplace in high-end restaurants ("sirloin and short rib," "filet and beef cheeks," whatever).

More to the point, restaurants other than steakhouses and Craft knockoffs don't just serve you a meat monolith on a plate. Dishes are composed. Look at some menu items from a recent Gramercy Tavern menu:

-Pasture Raised Chicken Poached Breast, Roasted Thigh, Root Vegetables & Foie Gras Lentil Sauce

-Roasted Venison Loin Onion Marmalade & Cranberry Beans

-Rabbit Roasted Shallots, Garlic Sausage, Olives and Potato Purée

-Braised Shoulder of Lamb Swiss Chard Leaves & Stems, Roasted Figs & Fig Puree

Each of those dishes has many components -- some even have multiple meats (chicken breast, chicken thigh and foie gras . . . what's a matchaholic to do?). Yet I've dined at Gramercy Tavern, I don't know, about a million times, and I've never had the slightest bit of trouble enjoying my meal with a bottle of wine. It's just not such a big deal. As supporting witnesses I call everybody in Europe.

[Craig Camp]

What ever happened to just drinking a bottle or two of wine with a meal?

The same thing that happened to being satisfied with the plastic food at your local chain grocery.

How can the same people who will drive all over town to find the right butcher, the freshest vegetables, pristine seafood, ethnic ingredients and great bread feel it's too nitpicky to pair wine with food?

Edited January 1, 2007 by Craig Camp (log)

[docsconz]

Steven, I do not see anything wrong or even pushy about Alinea's language regarding wine pairings. They happen to do a fabulous job with it and would IMO be doing their customers a disservice by not highlighting it. As for the comparison with El Bulli, it is a different restaurant with a different style and focus. They both work well. The wine pairings happen to work particularly well at Alinea and IMO represent a good value for the amount, variety and quality of wines served not to mention the synergism a good pairing has with the food. That Adria chooses to focus less on that aspect of dining should have no bearing on the experience at Alinea. Each approach works very well for the respective restaurant. I think your argument is more cogent if using restaurants other than Alinea as examples, where prices may be inordinately high for mediocre wines that don't even necessarily match all that well with easily matched food.

[Craig Camp]

Steven, I do not see anything wrong or even pushy about Alinea's language regarding wine pairings. They happen to do a fabulous job with it and would IMO be doing their customers a disservice by not highlighting it. As for the comparison with El Bulli, it is a different restaurant with a different style and focus. They both work well. The wine pairings happen to work particularly well at Alinea and IMO represent a good value for the amount, variety and quality of wines served not to mention the synergism a good pairing has with the food. That Adria chooses to focus less on that aspect of dining should have no bearing on the experience at Alinea. Each approach works very well for the respective restaurant. I think your argument is more cogent if using  restaurants other than Alinea as examples, where prices may be inordinately high for mediocre wines that don't even necessarily match all that well with easily matched food.

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I agree with you John, Alinea sees the wine and food as part of the same experience and to choose some wines would detract from the statement Grant is trying to make with that dish. Alinea is not a normal restaurant and they are looking to create a unique synergy with the food and the wine. You go to Alinea for the experience, not simply because you are hungry.

[pedro]

Is chef Achatz actively involved in the selection of the pairing wines? In the case of Adrià, he simply refuses to do that. He believes that it's simply too complex --why wine and not other beverage, for instance? So, pick a good wine --why not an excellent wine?-- which is not too intrusive and enjoy your meal. And your wine, too!

[Andy Lynes]

What ever happened to just drinking a bottle or two of wine with a meal?

The same thing that happened to being satisfied with the plastic food at your local chain grocery.

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That's a surprising comparison to make in my view. I think trying to pair a wine with every two or three bites of food on an extended tasting menu can easily become rather tiresome and be more about marketing pricey wines to a certain sector of the restaurant going public than the pleasures of the table. What could possibly be wrong with carefully selecting an adaptable wine to compliment a number of different dishes? To me, that shows respect for the efforts of both the chef and the winemaker without turning a sociable meal into a convoluted and expensive exercise.

[Andy Lynes]

So, pick a good wine --why not an excellent wine?-- which is not too intrusive and enjoy your meal. And your wine, too!

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A sommelier in a top London restaurant told me recently that he believes he got the job because he told the chef at his interview that he didn't really believe in matching food and wine and just wanted his customers to enjoy what they were drinking, whatever it was. Apparently that was music to the chef's ears.

Edited January 1, 2007 by Andy Lynes (log)

[Craig Camp]

What ever happened to just drinking a bottle or two of wine with a meal?

The same thing that happened to being satisfied with the plastic food at your local chain grocery.

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That's a surprising comparison to make in my view. I think trying to pair a wine with every two or three bites of food on an extended tasting menu can easily become rather tiresome and be more about marketing pricey wines to a certain sector of the restaurant going public than the pleasures of the table. What could possibly be wrong with carefully selecting an adaptable wine to compliment a number of different dishes? To me, that shows respect for the efforts of both the chef and the winemaker without turning a sociable meal into a convoluted and expensive exercise.

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Well you could make the same argument for an extended tasting menu then. At what number of courses does it become tiresome?

What could possibly be wrong with carefully selecting an adaptable wine to compliment a number of different dishes?

Absolutly nothing 99% of the time, but perhaps restaurants like Alinea are that other 1%.

[Craig Camp]

So, pick a good wine --why not an excellent wine?-- which is not too intrusive and enjoy your meal. And your wine, too!

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A sommelier in a top London restaurant told me recently that he believes he got the job because he told the chef at his interview that he didn't really believe in matching food and wine and just wanted his customers to enjoy what they were drinking, whatever it was. Apparently that was music to the chef's ears.

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I think that's quite the fashionable thing for sommeliers to say these days, but I've met few that did not have very exact ideas of what wines they thought were the best for various dishes.

Edited January 1, 2007 by Craig Camp (log)

[Shalmanese]

I still don't get it. Maybe it's the restaurant/home cooking dichotomy but in general, I reverse engineer it by first working out how many bottles of wine to be consumed and then what they are. If you need 2 bottles of wine for a party, then you get a adaptable red and an adaptable white, simple enough.

What I guess I don't understand is if you figure out you need more bottles of wine, what the rationale is for ever getting 2 of the same bottle. If you need 6 bottles of wine, why not get 6 different ones and match them to courses?

It's the same as the "small plates" idea with food. Sure, it can be taken too far or executed poorly but more variety is usually a good thing and at least adds a little special something to the night. But unlike multi-course dinners where the effort of putting it on rises with each additional course, multiple wine pairings takes almost no more effort than going with 1 or 2 wines over the night. To me, it sounds like a no-brainer.

[Schneier]

I think this is 100% a question of focus. I know wine people -- people who pick the wine first and then find food to match it -- who will discuss these subtlties endlessly. On the other hand, food people -- who pick the food first and then find a wine to match -- find it a bit too much.

[Craig Camp]

I think this is 100% a question of focus.  I know wine people -- people who pick the wine first and then find food to match it -- who will discuss these subtlties endlessly.  On the other hand, food people -- who pick the food first and then find a wine to match -- find it a bit too much.

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What happens when you get a wine and food person?

[Fat Guy]

I think this is 100% a question of focus.  I know wine people -- people who pick the wine first and then find food to match it -- who will discuss these subtlties endlessly.  On the other hand, food people -- who pick the food first and then find a wine to match -- find it a bit too much.

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That hypothesis doesn't stand up to cross-cultural comparison, though, does it? Because if we accept that top restaurants in Europe rarely if ever do course-by-course pairings, then we have a large body of "wine people" who don't fit the hypothesis.