I don’t believe that my lack of a favorite shows a lack of discrimination. Selecting a single favorite wine would be nearly impossible for me, given the range made of examples from myriad grapes, origins and climates using varying winemaking techniques yielding a spectrum of aromas, flavors and textures. Rather than singling out a favorite, I can more usefully suggest how I choose my favoed wine for the moment based on curiosity, mood, setting, and food matching.
I am an adventurous wine drinker, one who rarely drinks the same wine more than handful of times. Tasting a broad range of wines in my role as a wine buyer has resulted in being exposed to all sorts of new aromas and flavors. And once exposed to the novel character of a new grape or region, I always want to know more to establish a richer context. Is the particular wine I’ve tasted typical of the region/style or an outlier? This exploration is not always a search for the most delicious wine, but more an effort to set parameters for what to expect stylistically from the category, enabling me to select good examples on that basis. Sometimes the wines are delicious, whereas individual examples are not to my taste, but sampling multiple renditions enables me to understand how they might appeal to other wine drinkers.
For example, I recently attended a trade tasting of Georgian wines (from the country of Georgia in eastern Europe, not the state). Although the modern industry there is just a few decades old, there is history of making wine in the country that dates back more than 6000 years. Often the white wines are made with extended skin contact and fermented in clay amphora called qvervi. I noticed how the varietal makeup of these white wines seemed to matter more in terms of their acidity, weight and structure of tannins as opposed to aromas, which I often use as a guide for more widely known varieties. I have standing frames of reference for, say, Chenin Blanc, Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, but these have no real bearing on varieties used in Georgia that are relatively new to me.
Rkatsiteli, Mtsvane, Kisi, these white grapes vary by structure, but after being exposed to oxygen and skins for months, they show less of the typical “fruity” aromas that most of us have generally become accustomed to in white wines. The best way for me to select tasty examples in this new context was to taste multiple wines side-by-side to help define which ones I preferred, such as gentle, apricot-scented wines as opposed to heartier, dried fruit and walnut scented bottles showing distinctive, tea-like tannins.
On the other hand, when an average consumer plunks down their $8, or $28 or $80 for a bottle of wine, they would often like to know that they will enjoy the experience, which is completely understandable. Trying new varieties of wines or even familiar grapes sourced from different origins and climates can lead to unexpected (and hopefully positive) outcomes. Such a search might yield a new “favorite” grape or region, or you might confirm your standing preference for what you’ve already favored—or you might just decide that the advice you were given was ill-conceived because you disliked the wine that was recommended. For instance, if you love Merlot from California, you might like Tempranillo from Ribera del Duero in Spain. The Spanish wines will offer a similar juicy plum fruit note backed by silky tannins. On the other hand, you could try a Merlot based wine from Lazio in Italy or from the interior of Bordeaux from an appellation such as Blaye, each of which will offer similar structure, if a bit less fruit. If variety is the spice of life, trying new varieties will, hopefully, lead you to a richer love life with wine.
Choosing a wine based on mood can be focused on your own taste desires or to fulfill the needs of a group. Our different palate preferences can vary quite widely, even from day to day. Using foods as an example, you may desire a crisp and relatively healthful salad for lunch on one day, whereas on another day you might prefer a steak and cheese sandwich with a heap of crisp French fries. So too in wine, sometimes one may be satisfied by something dense and heady, but on other days, higher-acid and lighter-bodied white wines will fit the bill. The guideline here is to trust your instinct, eating and drinking what seems appealing in the moment, which will often lead to harmonies between the food and wine.
In terms of meeting the needs of a group, unless you are sharing a bottle with equally engaged wine drinkers, usually the approach of selecting a common denominator will be the best bet. I recall being asked to select wines from a restaurant list for a group of 8-10 friends. While most of them would probably fit the stereotype of “foodies,” I was eventually told, essentially, to “just pick the wine already.” And while those in the group trusted me, I still felt a need to present a few options and explain why I had narrowed the selection down to those wines. Still, in the last analysis, the wine mattered less than being present and engaged in the meal and conversation at that table.
The setting in which you consume the wine matters as well. Often the wine becomes memorable due to circumstances and the friends you shared it with—not the particular fermented juice you happen to have tasted. An intimate dinner may “need” different wines, depending on your dining companions. A table full of wine loving foodies will be more likely to delve into a discussion about the flavors of the wines, while a dinner party for old college pals will be more about the social aspect and likely offer less opportunity to engage with a specific wine. I would pick a relatively simpler wine with less complexity in aroma and flavor for the later circumstance. Similarly, a picnic on a Spring or Autumn day may be best paired with a lightly fruity wine like Beaujolais, whereas a 5-course dinner at a glowingly lit, linen-draped restaurant table might benefit from specific wine pairings for each course. These might progress from a sparkling wine to sip while reading the wine list and with appetizers, followed by a crisp white with lighter earlier courses, and often a heartier red wine for the main course. While this could seem a bit doctrinaire, such a progression isn’t difficult to achieve, but if you’d rather chat than scrutinize a wine list, there are often sommeliers or servers on restaurant floors who’ll be happy to guide you.
There have been entire books written about food and wine pairing, and I doubt I’ll be able to outdo the efforts of those writers here. At the simplest level, food and wine matching is about complementing or contrasting the weights, textures, and intensities of flavors of the foods and wines. A “traditional” pairing like Cabernet Sauvignon and grilled steak works for a number of reasons; both are relatively hearty, and the richness of the meat is matched with the fuller body of most Cabernet-based wines. There is also the factor of the more robust tannins of Cabernet binding to the proteins of the chewed steak in your mouth as opposed to the inside of your mouth. This pairing of swings from the slick, lingering luxuriance of beef fat to the cleansing, refreshing sip of red wine, with both sensations encouraging another bite and another sip. This is an example of complementing weights and textures.
My advice would be to consider the weight of your dish; baked, white-fleshed fish generally needs a wine of lighter-bodied wine than, say, the fattier flesh of Chilean Sea Bass or Salmon. I might drink a crisp, off-dry German Riesling with the baked fish, which I would consider a complementary pairing in terms of weight. With the oilier fish, a more richly textured, dry Chenin Blanc like a Vouvray or creamy, barrel-fermented Chardonnay would be a nice complement. Contrasting choices for the richer fish could range from very light Chablis, with its higher acidity, to a Pinot Noir from a cooler climate that could offer sufficient acidity and a relatively soft tannin structure.
In terms of complementing or contrasting flavors, consider the example of some smoky, sauce-slicked BBQ ribs. One could match the dish with an equally intensely fruity and spicy red Zinfandel, which may also offer a touch of sweetness, or—for a dramatic contrast—instead pair the ribs with a crisp and fuller-bodied dry rosé. The rosé wine’s strawberry and watermelon flavors could echo the summer season if that’s when you’re enjoying your ribs.
So, do I have a favorite wine? Still, no. However, I love the challenge of finding a wine which will match the moment. Join me for my next column, in which I’ll address how you can utilize additional ideas to help you choose appropriate wines for the moment.