Matching wine with fusion food

There seems to be quite a buzz around pairing wine with spicy food at the moment - detractors saying it’s a waste of time, people like me saying that on the contrary you can derive a good deal of pleasure from it.

Last night’s dinner at the Covent Garden restaurant Tamarai, which featured a series of one-to-one matches devised by wine writer Charles Metcalfe and his wife Kathryn McWhirter was a case in point, showing that even when you venture beyond the usual suspects (aromatic wines) you can find many successful combinations. Here’s what we ate and drank:

Sweet chilli lotus root with chives and fresh coriander
A really delicious ‘nibble’ - the lotus root was covered with a slightly sticky glaze which went really well with a crisp, limey 2007 Knappstein Hand Picked Riesling from the Clare Valley

Smoked salmon thayar Satham (curd rice) with tomato pickle
Another one-bite canap that was less spicy than it sounded. Paired very successfully with a 2007 Laroche Chardonnay Terret from the Languedoc (an unoaked wine that would in fact have worked well with other smoked salmon dishes)

Soft shell crab with flame roast coconut and masala (spiced) mayo
A perfectly sound pairing with a richer, fuller-bodied Stonier Chardonnay from the Yarra Valley. Other possibilities would have been a Viognier (which would have picked up on the coconut) or a glass of sparkling wine (always good with deep fried foods)

Hoisin duck spring roll with pickled plum sauce
Not quite as it sounds - the flavours were hot and citrussy - more Thai than Chinese and as such a great foil for a 2007 Spy Valley Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc

Beef Satay, wasabi yoghurt
Apparently Charles had picked a Rioja Crianza with this mildly spiced dish which I think would have worked really well though for some reason it wasn’t on offer. None of the other wines were quite up to it

Mango and green papaya, banana blossom pandana dressing
Listed on its own without a pairing this sharply flavoured salad certainly wasn’t an easy customer. The Spy Valley Sauvignon worked best. The Knappstein Riesling survived

Curry leaf tiger prawns with wild rice uppama
Also partnered with the Spy Valley Sauvignon which worked well with the spicy tomato marinade

Masala Morels with water chestnut and herb lemon rice
Quite a mild dish served with a dosa which, together with the morels made it quite wine-friendly. A less acidic wine - the Stonier chardonnay - worked well here, as, I think, would a Pinot Noir

Thai Chicken Green Curry, pea aubergine, young bamboo shoots
One of only two pairings I didn’t really think worked, partly because I wasn’t mad about the slightly bubblegummy 2007 Vivanco Rioja rosado (which would probably have matched better with a meat curry or the beef satay) The Sauvignon survived - just. An Alsace Pinot Gris (or, to be honest, a witbier) would have been a better pairing.

There were also three desserts: a seasonal fruit satay (a nice way to end a meal of this kind) a roasted sesame and white chocolate semi-freddo with wild berry coulis and iced mango with goji berries with bitter chocolate mousse, none of which really worked with the accompanying slightly lightweight 2006 Muscat de Rivesaltes from Jean Marc Lafage. A beerenauslese or other very sweet riesling with good acidity might have done the trick but the combination of mango and chocolate was far from easy.

The only drawback about this approach is that an Asian meal typically features a selection of dishes rather than serving them one at a time but if you were serving Westernised fusion-style dishes at home you could find the suggestions useful.

Overall I felt the Spy Valley New Zealand Sauvignon and Knappstein Riesling were the most versatile wines but the meal certainly showed it is possible to pair an oaky chardonnay with spicy food.

There seems to be quite a buzz around pairing wine with spicy food atthe moment - detractors saying it’s a waste of time, people like mesaying that on the contrary you can derive a good deal of pleasure fromit. Last night’s dinner at the Covent Garden restaurant Tamarai,which featured a series of one on one matches devised by wine writerCharles Metcalfe and his wife Kathryn McWhirter was a case in point,showing that even when you venture beyond the usual suspects (aromaticwines) you can find many successful combinations.

An interview with Enrico Bernardo

If any sommelier looks set for Gordon Ramsay-style super-stardom it has to be Enrico Bernado.

At the age of 31 his eponymous Paris restaurant already has a Michelin star after being open for just six months and he’s opened another in the smart ski resort of Courchevel. Even his CV up to then is impressive - best sommelier in Italy at 20, head sommelier at the Georges V (where he spent six and a half years) at 24, the youngest ever Best Sommelier in the World at 27. Oh, and he’s written a couple of books including a massive 500 pager of tasting notes on the wines of the Mediterranean Mes Vins de Méditerranée.

On top of all this he’s come up with a really neat idea which is to open a restaurant where the food is dictated by the wine. You choose what you want to drink, the chef decides what you eat. There’s an a la carte menu of some 13 wines (prices include an accompanying dish) and 6 set menus which range from a lunchtime menu en vitesse at 50€ to a no holds barred evening prestige menu at 1000€. Does anyone actually go for that? “In the six months we’ve had 30 people taking it. We’ve sold more Petrus here than I did at the Georges V.” Bernardo laughs.

The idea behind the concept, he says, is to give customers the opportunity to explore the wine world with simple, straightforward Italian food. A lot of top restaurants have big Bordeaux and Burgundy lists and luxury ingredients like foie gras but people are looking for different experiences. Don’t people want to know what’s on the menu though? He shrugs. “When you go to dinner at someone’s house you don’t know what you’re going to eat and drink. People discover the quality of the food is good here. They don’t worry about it.”

The menu and wines change every week depending what produce is in season and Bernardo’s current vinous interests. “We hold a regular Friday morning tasting where we taste 12 dishes and 12 wines. Bernado who also trained as a chef comes up with the suggestions. His chef Davide Bariloni creates the dishes. “We go with the initial idea in 60-70% of the pairings. In 30-40% Davide changes the sauce or the garnish. I change my ideas all the time. My idea for the next couple of months is to offer one wine with two different dishes.”

My husband and I road-tested two of the lunch menus recently - the four course ‘a l’aveugle’ blind tasting menu (75 €), an elaborate version of the options game where you know neither the wine or the food you’ll be getting and a five course La France du Nord au Sud tasting menu at 180 euros which started off with a . . . er, Franz Hirtzberger Gruner Veltliner Honivogl, an excellent match for a carpaccio of sea bass but hardly French. “What happened there?” I asked Enrico. “I’m Italian” he shrugged as if that explained everything.

Although the longer menu offered three outstanding matches (the Gruner and bass, a risotto with morilles with a 2005 Ballot Millot Meursault Les Criots and a Domaine Gentile Patrimonio Rappu with tiramisu Bernardo committed the cardinal sin (in my book) of pairing a tannic young red Bordeaux (a 2004 Loville Las Cases) with a Reblochon, offset only by a slice of fig bread. It was a predictably appalling match. I was curious about this as on the la carte his pairings for cheese included the much more contemporary matches of a 1996 Pichet Chateau Chalon from the Jura, a Duvel beer and a 1989 Rivesaltes and Bernardo’s own preference with a cheeseboard, he admits, is for vintage blanc de blancs champagne. Pressed, he conceded that his predominantly French clientele expected red with cheese and a wine of this calibre in a menu at this price.

The blind tasting menu, which my husband took, was better value both from a financial point of view and in terms of entertainment value and I freely admit that Bernardo got the better of us. We mistook an uncharacteristically rich Bourgogne Aligot from J M Boillot (well paired with a Jerusalem artichoke soup with a balsamic vinegar drizzle) for a South African chardonnay and a heady 2005 Domaine Courbis Saint Joseph (served in a black glass with a dish of lamb and Mediterranean vegetables) for a Malbec. (We should have known an adopted Frenchman would stick to French wines) We more or less hit the spot with a Bernard Gripa 2006 Saint-Pray (perfect with oriechiette with spring vegetables) which we correctly identified as a Rhone white and a Montlouis Moelleux from Chidaine (gloriously paired with fresh mango and raspberries) as a Loire dessert wine.

Interestingly there were no Italian wines. Why, I asked Bernardo? He shrugged again. “Basically I prefer Italian red to Italian white. My favourite wine regions are Burgundy and the Northern Rhone. At home I drink wines like Saint-Aubin, Crozes Hermitage, Cote Rotie, some Barbera d’Alba. Not Bordeaux - it’s too expensive.”

“I’ve noticed a move away from powerful wines like Amarone and Shiraz that are impossible to drink at table to wines with more elegance and lightness, especially at this time of year. In spring I look more to Austria, Germany, New Zealand and South Africa for interesting whites.”

Compared to the master of food and wine pairing Alain Senderens who I’ve mentioned before on these pages. Bernardo’s matching menus are less painstakingly conceived and less refined but Il Vino is a more relaxed experience - a bit like a very classy, designer wine bar although Bernardo is reluctant to categorise it as that.

“In France there are different types of restaurant - brasserie, bistro, gastronomic. In Italy there are just restaurants. We are a restaurant with fresh seasonal food a nice wine selection and good service. Not sophisticated just comfortable.”

“Too many industry professionals go in for a competitive approach with long explanations for every dish. My view is if you want a spectacle go to the theatre. People are going more and more for simplicity.”

It’ll be interesting to see how well Il Vino does once the novelty of the concept wears off or whether Bernardo will have to revert to a conventional menu. In the meantime this ambitious young wine professional already has his eye on further expansion. In Italy? “No! I love Italy but I’d never work there again. Maybe London . . . Or maybe I’ll go back to the kitchen one day.”
Maybe. With Bernardo I suspect you can never rule anything out.

Il Vino d’Enrico Bernardo is at 13, boulevard de la Tour Maubourg, 75007 Paris. Tel: 01 44 11 72 00 www.ilvinobyenricobernardo.com

This article was first published in the July 2008 edition of Decanter.

Red wine and red meat - what could possibly go wrong?

Wine writer Stuart Walton casts a sceptical eye over accepted wisdom:

Can there any more dependable rule of thumb when it comes to gastronomic partnering than red wines with red meats? It’s as though it’s the one piece of advice that hardly needs any qualifying. The big, muscular structures of most red wines are what the sinewy, densely textured or highly flavoured qualities of red meat need.

Like many another guideline, though, it turns out to have its range of exceptions. And if there is one basic principle behind the mismatches, it is that the wine is too heavy for the food.

I was reminded of this point at a recent press lunch, where the wines of highly regarded Chilean producer Aurelio Montes (who has interests in Argentina and the Napa too) were paired with some fairly straightforward dishes. A three-year-old Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon that has benefited from a judicious oaking regime – some of the wine barrel-aged, some not, some of the oak new, some not, all of it French – with roast rack of lamb? Sounds a no-brainer.

In fact, it missed by a country mile, principally because the tannic edge on the wine was still quite keen, and there was an unfashionable, distinctly mdocain astringency to it. Alongside the pink-cooked lamb, which was served in one piece and was on the distinctly fatty side, the wine wasn’t having any of it. The softness of the meat and the only lightly rendered fat needed something correspondingly softer to accompany it.

We often assume that fattiness in food needs something in the wine to cut through it. In the case of red wines with fatty red meats (duck would be another good example), that cutting-edge comes much more digestibly in the form of ripe acidity than greenish tannin. Of the two supposedly safe bets with lamb – Bordeaux and Rioja – the latter wins out for me far more often, just because the textures of a Rioja Reserva are more sympathetic to the meat than most claret, at least when the wine is anything less than a decade old.

Too much alcohol, the bane of many southern-hemisphere and even some European wines these days, is a besetting problem. Anything north of 13.5% leaves a burn in the back of the throat that can detract from the flavour of meat, as well as even the most assertive saucing and seasoning.

The relative weight issue is best demonstrated by partnering red meats with red wines that should on paper be too gentle. One of the best-kept secrets of an often unjustly derided wine region, Beaujolais, is that its most illustrious wines are great with red meats. Try a Morgon with a couple of years’ bottle-age with your next joint of beef, and you may well find yourself pleasantly astonished at the balance. It can be pitch-perfect.

But what about the spiciest treatments, you may well wonder? Can a midweight red really stand up to, say, peppered steak, lamb rogan josh, or Mexican-spiced dishes? Wouldn’t they be better off with a big, belting Zinfandel or the burliest Australian Shiraz? Not so, in my experience. Again, massive alcohol just gets in the way. It can painfully accentuate the smoulder of chilli or black pepper on the palate in a wholly unappealing way.

What’s needed instead with spicy dishes is an opulent layer of flesh in the wine, big fruit, supple tannins, and perhaps a little intrinsic spice of its own, though that last isn’t mandatory. A youngish, gingery-peppery Crozes-Hermitage can go great guns with highly spiced dishes, but the svelte tones of an oak-burnished Merlot, from Chile, California or New Zealand, can be even better.

All of this begs the question as to what those great strapping bully-boys of the red wine world are really for, since they aren’t much fun to drink on their own. They do have the necessary brawn to stand up well sometimes to very mature, hard cow’s-milk cheeses. Otherwise, I’m increasingly finding that I don’t know the answer to that question.

Stuart Walton is a long-serving food and wine writer, a contributor to the Good Food Guide, and author of The Right Food with the Right Wine.