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(First
published in Food & Wine in Feb 2001)
I
was flicking round the channels late one night recently, glass of
port in hand, when I settled on the Jerry Springer show. The
outrageous American talk show host had as his guest a striking young
woman who had a secret to reveal to her boyfriend of several months,
along with a few million viewers. She was in fact a he! Was he
surprised? I’ll say, but he took it surprisingly well. Kids are
out of the question, but I think that they’re hoping to adopt.
I
had a similar experience late last year on a trip to America. No, my
wife hasn’t changed gender, but my host did reveal something
shocking about the other love of my life, food and wine, which
turned my world upside down. He contended that any wine would go
with any food. The new rule is to drink your favourite wine with
whatever you like! Food and wine matching fascism is for fools.
Anything is possible so long as you follow a couple of simple new
rules. The key is simply to adjust the seasoning on your food.
To
be perfectly honest I’m still trying to get my head around it all.
Putting it all in some historic context may help. There have always
been rules. In the old days it was simple: red with fish and white
with meat. This edict was apparently an appendix on the stone
tablets Moses received from God or at least iced onto a cake baked
by Escoffier. In the modern era, bright young chefs, journalists and
winemakers have been boldly going were no gastronaut had gone before
and washing fish down with red wine (do try grilled salmon and a
good chilled cru Beaujolais) or eating cheese with white wine (do
try Sancerre with goat’s cheese). Now my American host, Master of
Wine Tim Hanni, is trying to take us to the outer limits. Does he
know what he’s talking about? Should we follow him? I suspect he
does and we should.
Hanni
worked for Californian producer Beringer for eleven years before
setting up as a consultant. He used to be their International
Business Development Manager which involved gathering airmiles like
the rest of us get Superclub points and showing restaurateurs how
fabulous Beringer wines were and how well they matched fine foods.
Eventually his tireless research of his subject (it was a dirty job,
but…) undermined his role. He just didn’t believe in it. He came
to realise that all that stuff about matching weight of flavour,
contrasting flavours and echoing flavours, that we so called experts
talk about, was just “crap”, as he put it succinctly.
He
has sought to redefine the basics. Firstly he has defined taste and
flavour, terms which are mostly bandied about indiscriminately.
Taste is one of the five basic sensations in the mouth, sweet, salt,
sour, bitter and umami.
The oddman out from the traditional line up is umami, a Japanese
term translating roughly as savoury. Flavour is a sensation in the
mouth and nose arising from a combination of taste, smell and touch.
Our emotional or physical state, our expectations and past
experience can all affect how we perceive flavours.
The
basic taste sensations, Tim says, are the critical factor in our
interaction with food or wine. Whilst Jilly Goulden may wax lyrical
about the sybaritic delights of scents of summer hedgerows in her
wine or other flights of fancy, for most people our core preferences
revolve around taste. The sensations most likely to prompt the
answer yes to the question: “do I like this?” are those of
sweetness and savoury or umami. Babies, perhaps, offer the best
evidence of this. Does anybody know one that likes sour or bitter
tastes? No, sourness, saltiness or bitterness are much more likely
to be acquired preferences. Engagingly he calls those of us who have
acquired such preferences ‘taste mutants’. A cursory glance at
sales figures for sweet wines such as white Zinfandel or
Liebfraumilch show which how deserved the title is. Those of us who
don’t like them are the weirdoes as the majority of the world has
a sweet tooth.
Tim
doesn’t seek to change this, unlike most journalists or wine
merchants who seem to think that all these people need is a little
education and exposure to proper wines. The truth is most will never
trade up and why should we worry. No one passes comment if you take
sugar in your coffee, why should wine be so different? If people
want to drink white Zin with their steak, so what? The point is for
individuals to maximise the enjoyment of their favourite wines or to
let us taste the wine as the winemaker intended.
But
don’t some tastes clash? Yes they do, but the answer is simple –
balance the seasoning. Sour (e.g. citric fruits, vinegar, capers,
mustard, dry wine reductions in sources) or salty flavours (e.g.
salt, soy, parmesan, olives, Asian fish sauce) in food make wine
seem milder (less dry, excessively fruity, less tannic or bitter)
whilst sweet (sugar or honey, hoisin, fruit juice or off dry wines)
or savoury flavours (meat, seafood, poultry, tomatoes, mushrooms,
green vegetables and ham) in food make wine seem stronger. Results
will be even more pronounced if the wine has been aged in oak.
Bitterness is a little more complex but also seems to make wine seem
stronger. By balancing the flavours in the food, by altering the
seasoning or by producing dishes that are balanced to begin with,
you can enjoy any wine that you want. It’s that simple!
He
suggests a couple of experiments to make his point. Take a sip of
your favourite full-bodied red wine, a Cabernet Sauvignon for
example. Now take a bite of sweet apple or mango or melon then take
another sip of the wine. The wine should taste more bitter as the
sweetness of the fruit makes the wine taste stronger. Repeat the
experiment, but this time sprinkle salt on the apple slice, it
should taste milder.
What
does this mean at the table? If your food
makes your wine taste too bitter, too dry or too tannic, season with
salty or sour ingredients like vinegar, lemon, mustard or soy. If
your wine tastes too mild, that’s too fruity or soft, less tannic
than you like, season with sweet or umami (savoury) flavours such as
sugar, honey, fruit juices, black, green or pink peppercorns or
chillies to make it seem stronger.
As
I said, I’m still coming to terms with this and experimenting at
home. I think Hanni is right, but sometimes I have had food and wine
combinations that clearly exceed the sum of their parts. For example
Port and Stilton or Cashel Blue cheese are separately quite
delicious, but together are simply sublime. As Jerry Springer’s
couple discovered, few things in life are completely black and
white. It pays to keep an open mind. Experiment for yourself, I’d
be delighted to hear what you think.
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