You’ll often hear that the first rule of food-and-wine pairing is that there should be no rules. Drink what you want. Hogwash!
Don’t believe me? Fine, wash down that birthday cake with a full-bodied Petite Sirah. You love Petite Sirah, right? What better way to tame those tannins than with a hefty mouthful of sugary frosting. Yuck!
Admit it, you need some help. Just like me. I can handle the basics and have a long memory for magical pairings that I’ve encountered through the years. But I’m challenged sometimes — even stumped occasionally — when faced with a matchup that is beyond my experience.
My fall-back position when hosting a dinner party has always been “let’s try this, it may not work but it should be interesting.” This only proves I can BS with the best of them. I mean, why guess? Go to Amazon and buy the world’s greatest book on the subject — WHAT to DRINK with WHAT you EAT — by authors Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page.
You’ll especially love this book if you’re a foodie as well as a wino, for Dornenburg and Page spent a great deal of time with and devote considerable space to the thoughts of such culinary luminaries as Patrick O’Connell of Inn at Little Washington and Daniel Boulud of Daniel, chefs who have very specific and useful ideas about food-and-wine pairings.
Of course, if you’d rather forgo the book, you can do what I sometimes do — at least in a good wine savvy restaurant. After perusing the wine list to see what I want to drink, I show the sommelier my picks and ask for suggestions on the best menu items to order with my wine!
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