The Unexpected Pair

Bogey and Bacall. Tracy and Hepburn. Diana and Prince Charles. You look at these pairs and some of them worked extremely well and others . . . well let’s just say they were a flop. 

But all had one thing in common. The pairing was unexpected.

I think it’s the same way with pairing wines with dinner.  I know there’s always some chart or another that suggests certain types of wines with certain types of food. And as a general rule it’s pretty good.  But it assumes that every wine of the same varietal tastes similarly.

But they don’t.

It seems to me that every wine takes on the character of the winemaker as well as the j’ne sais quai of the soil and environment in which it’s grown. That makes wine pairings with food a little more complex than just the red wine with beef, white wine with fish approach.

Perhaps it’s found in exploring wines beyond the norm.  By the norm, I guess I mean the traditional American standbys like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay, White Zinfandel etc. Yes I pulled the white zin into the conversation.  I don’t know about you but that’s the type of wine many people get their start down the path of wine drinking.

All this to say, I had some friends over the other night, one of whom I don’t see on a regular basis because he lives out of town.  I had been thinking over the menu but hadn’t really landed on anything and then he arrived in the office on Monday.

It’s obvious that he’s taken a completely different approach to eating as he looked like he’d been spending a lot of time in the gym and a portion of him was missing. Now when I’m entertaining the last thing on my mind is trying to figure out the healthiest meal possible. 

I love cheese and whole cream and butter. Yes I love butter. Not margarine. Not light butter but sweet cream butter. (The French have this butter with fluer de sel that is outrageous.) I come by this genetically.  My grandmother always liked a little bread with her butter. Even though the food is fantastic, that doesn’t lead to necessarily the healthiest cooking.

Back to dinner. What to cook? I decided on something relatively simple but it led to a bit of a crisis for me.  I decided to go with a chicken stir fry.  So what crisis am I talking about? I’m primarily a red wine drinker. I had just received a case of red wines from Seghesio that I was anxious to dig into.

Now it’s not like my wine cabinet is empty and there wasn’t a lot of choice on the white wine side, it’s just that I was looking forward to opening a bottle (or two) from my new case. My friend is a white wine drinker so not a problem as I had just opened a bottle of Chamisal stainless Chardonnay I had found at Costco.  That was a pleasant surprise!

But, alas, I had still not decided on a wine and I couldn’t find my handy pairing chart to tell me what I should choose.  It’s probably a little dangerous leaving me on my own to select the pairing but I guess I would be the only one who would suffer if the choice were poor.

I decided on the Seghesio Grenache.  I did have a bottle of their Old Vine Carignane in my hand and a bottle of the Marian’s Reserve but I eventually decided on the Grenache. I was pleasantly surprised that the pair was actually quite good.  At least to my pedestrian palate. I didn’t bother to find my pairing chart to see if that was something that was recommended or not.

But frankly more than the food or the wine, it was about getting caught up with a good friend. The wine and the food made it easy to have a great conversation and get caught up.

So, the next time you have a chance to rethink a pairing – take a chance. It’s possible that you end up with a Charles and Diana pairing (in which case you won’t be doing that again). But when you find yourself in the midst of a Spencer Tracy/Katherine Hepburn pairing like I did the other night, well just enjoy an evening with an unexpected but exceptional pair!

And, if I might steal and modify a line from one of my gastronomical heroes, Jacques Pepin:  Happy Pairing!