Wine and food pairings

Apart from its characteristic ripe guava aroma, it is vibrant, with intense lemongrass and fresh ginger notes that highlight the core of citrus and pear flavours

We all know that wine goes best with food — the question is, which wine with which food?

Five hundred years back, wine was quaffed mostly by Europeans (which in those days still included the British!), who used it to wash their baked/boiled/roasted meats down (accompanied by bread and cheese and potatoes). The cuisine was largely dry and bland, so the classical matches were “White wines with white meats (chicken, fish, seafood)” and “Red wines with red meats (beef/lamb/venison/pork)”.

And that’s the way things largely stayed for a few hundred years. The wealthier you were the better the quality of the food and wine, but given that Europe was emerging from a “Little Ice Age” (1600 to about 1800), most wines were low alcohol and thin, and couldn’t have been very good.

Around 1500 CE Europeans had discovered the sea passage to India and Southeast Asia, and suddenly not only spices like pepper and cardamom but the cuisines of the Coromandel Coast and Indonesia started hitting the tables of the nobility. Sommeliers were hard put to find which wines matched curries flavoured with these exotic condiments.

Let’s first understand the taste profile of wines, in terms of body, acidity, and tannins (bitterness):

• A Sauvignon Blanc is light-bodied but has good acidity
• A Chardonnay has more body but less acidity
• A Pinot Noir is light to medium-bodied, with low tannins
• Cabernet Sauvignons are full-bodied and have high tannins

The food-pairing mantra today recommends either Complementary or Congruent Pairings  and sometimes the same cuisine can be paired with different wines.

Complementary pairing: Where the acidity complements the creaminess (okay, fats/oils) in the dish — for example a Sauvignon Blanc with a cheesy pizza, where the wine’s acidity cuts through the cheese. Or one could pair a Rosé with mildly spicy Indian food.

Congruent pairing: Where the wine and food profiles match — for example salads or seafood with Pinot Grigio or even a Chardonnay; alternatively have a Merlot with that dish of noodles and stir-fry pork.

And remember, Indian palates have a lifetime of gobbling spicier cuisines than European ones, so have a different tolerance level. European wine writers tend to recommend a Riesling or even a Gewürztraminer with relatively spicy Indian foods, whereas Indian palates would find a cooled red wine going just fine with such dishes.

My recommendation: to pair the wine with the sauces or spices, not the meats or vegetables under those condiments, and don’t be afraid of getting creative — there are as many wines as cuisines out there, and taste preferences are so personal that it’s no use generalising.

Wines I’ve been drinking: The Saint Clair Sauvignon Blanc is a classical Marlborough white from New Zealand — made famous not even 20 years back by Cloudy Bay, with which the Saint Clair’s vineyards share a boundary.

The 2018 vintage (90 points from Wine Spectator) is priced in Bangalore at Rs 2,988 at retail and well worth the price: apart from its characteristic ripe guava aromas, it is vibrant, with intense lemongrass and fresh ginger notes that highlight the core of citrus and pear flavours, finishing with a hint of lime zest. Just yummy.

Alok Chandra is a Bengaluru-based wine consultant