A Mouthful of Wine

Aroma Junkies Get Center of Olfactory Art

I don't do much re-reporting, but this bears a look: New York's Museum of Arts & Design is dedicating a department to aroma arts, that is, perfume, curated by Chandler Burr. Read more about it here. Who knows--perhaps the aromatic art of wine will get a nod.

Adaptation 3: Tricks for Wine Pairing

With so many tastes and aromas layered in the food and wine you consume, it can be a tricky game to figure out which of your senses will adapt to what, and how to maximize your sensory pleasure. The “rules” of wine pairing are often contradictory—the first step is to choose which rule to apply; the second step is to choose the right wine! Experimentation is the best way to learn what works, but here is a collection of pointers that may help.

Like cancels like: There are certain tastes in food that can alter the taste of your wine for the worse—your palate adapts to a certain level of, say, sugar, and can no longer register any sweetness in the wine. This makes the wine taste sour. (If you want to experience this, try the toothpaste experiment.) The key here is to make sure your wine has more of that taste than your food. In other words, the wine should be sweeter than the food. This also applies to acidity.

Sometimes opposites attract: Contrary to the above rule about tastes, textures tend to accumulate until they’re too much of a good thing. The heat of a high-alcohol wine only aggravates the heat of spicy food, and a structureless, “fat” wine makes fried or creamy foods into a bland mess. In these cases, it’s best to play elements off each other: spicy needs sweet; creamy or fatty (like fettucini alfredo) needs acidity; and fatty proteins (like steak) need tannin.

Remember weight: If your food is heavy and rich, try pairing it with a rich, full-bodied wine. Delicate foods often call for light-bodied wines.

The lemon trick: If your food is something that could be served with a wedge of lemon for squeezing—salad, oysters, fish, shellfish, fried calamari, even chicken paillard or plain veal scallopini—feel free to choose a wine that acts like lemon: one with high acidity. Muscadet and Chablis are classic with oysters and would work well with most green salads or seafoods; and high-acidity whites and reds such as Beaujolais and Sangiovese/Chianti work like lemon with chicken and veal.

When in doubt (the easiest trick to remember): The European countries developed their wine making over centuries, which means the wines were developed in harmony with each culture’s taste in food. When in doubt, go with the wine that comes from where your food comes from. If you can narrow your food source down to a region (Alsace, Sicily…) and match that, even better. Chances are you’ll end up with a harmonious pairing.

 

A Sweet Wine Tasting

At the shop where I work I led a sweet wine tasting earlier this week that was particularly interesting because the four wines we tried were so different. I brought four foods to mix and match with the wines, without having tasted the wines in advance, which led to a fun quasi-scientific evaluation that everyone took part in. It would be easy to try this at home. Here’s how it went.

The wines:

1. Hétsolo Tokaji Aszú 2000 (Tokay, Hungary; $38/375 ml)

The least sweet of the wines, with 3 puttonyos (the range of sweetness from 1 to 6 that Tokaji is measured by) and some of the honeyed apricot flavor of noble rot.

2. Cooper Mountain Vin Glace Pinot Blanc 2006 (Willamette Valley, Oregon; $30/375 ml)

An ice wine made by manual freezing, but nonetheless pure, with zingy acidity and a bright, intense grapefruit and guava flavor. Made from organic and biodynamic grapes.

3. Favaíto Moscatel do Douro NV (Douro, Portugal; $15)

A fortified wine (17% alcohol) made from Moscatel Galego grapes, a subvariety of Muscat with its typical heady floral aromas. The simplest wine of the four, but a customer favorite. The Portuguese like to spike their beer with this—and I can attest to the success of that cocktail!

4. Quinta do Noval Late Bottled Vintage Port 2003 (Douro, Portugal; $28)

Also a fortified wine (19.5% alcohol), this is an unfiltered LBV that provided a needed red wine counterpoint to the previous three whites. The differences are in the tannin and the earthy berry/fig/date/licorice flavors.

The foods:

1. Roasted almonds

These were almost too light in flavor to hold their own with the wines, with the exception of the Tokaji (1).

2. Blue cheese (Danish, but anything would work)

This was too pungent for the gentler flavors of the Tokaji (1), but was remarkably good with all of the rest of the wines, particularly with the high acidity of the Vin Glace (2) and the earthier flavors of the Port (4). Wines 2 through 4 were sweet enough to stand up to the sweetness of the cheese, which brings to mind the all-important Dessert Pairing Rule:

When pairing desserts and sweet wines, the wine should always be sweeter than the dessert. If you want to know why, read about adaptation. 

3. Dark chocolate

Chocolate is notoriously difficult to pair with wine because of its sweetness and tannin. Milk chocolate is all but impossible to please (too sweet), but dark chocolate (greater than 50% cocoa) likes Port a whole lot. Port (4) has the sweetness and tannin to pair with a less-sweet dark chocolate.

4. Carrot cake

Super-sweet, with its cream cheese icing, and mildly spicy, this was beautiful with the Vin Glace (2), whose acidity lasered through the creamy sugariness, and with the Port (4), which nicely complemented the winter spices. Also fine with the Moscatel (3).

If you’re trying this yourself, you almost can’t go wrong: Think…who would complain about sweet wines and desserts in any combination?! But it can be very interesting to suss out the finer affinities of an assortment of goodies. Treat yourself—and let me know what you find out.

 

The Truth About Sulfites

Many wine consumers seem to worry about sulfites. Perhaps it’s because of the mysterious warning on the wine label. But this is one thing most people can relax about: Sulfites are dangerous if you are asthmatic and/or have a sulfite allergy (sulfites cause breathing difficulties in about 5% of asthmatics). Unless you’re a member of the small group who need to be aware of sulfites, that “Contains sulfites” statement is just like the one on a chocolate wrapper that says it may have been processed in a facility that processes nuts. You need to know this only if you have trouble with nuts; the package tells everyone just to be safe.

Almost all wine makers use sulfur dioxide as an antioxidant (preservative), although most try to minimize its use. What most people don’t know is that the yeast that cause the all-important fermentation in wine making also produce sulfites naturally during that process—some 6 to 40 parts per million (ppm). The FDA requires the “Contains sulfites” statement on the wine label starting at 10 parts per million. Another little-known fact is that any food or beverage containing 10 ppm or more of a sulfite must declare its presence on the label (with the ingredients). And many, many foods contain sulfites, including deli meats, condiments, processed potato products, frozen doughs, fruit juices, and fruit products such as dessert toppings and dried fruit.

Many people believe that organic wines do not contain sulfites. Aside from the natural sulfite contributions of the yeast, organic wine makers are allowed to and often do use sulfites—up to 100 ppm. Wines that are marketed as “sulfite-free” may be organic, but organic wines are not necessarily sulfite free. “Sulfite-free” wines may simply contain fewer than 10 ppm, thereby avoiding the labeling requirement.

Here are the numbers.

Maximum sulfite level allowed in wine in U.S.: 350 ppm (parts per million)

Maximum sulfite level allowed in organic wine in U.S.: 100 ppm

Sulfites produced by yeast during fermentation: 6 to 40 ppm

Minimum sulfite level requiring sulfite statement on wine label: 10 ppm

Minimum sulfite level requiring sulfite declaration on any label: