Serves: 5
Well, the standard rules start running through your mind. For a steak dinner, you must forget about all white wines because you have to serve red wine with red meat, right? And avoid all sweet wines such as white Zinfandel because they are unsophisticated. Hmmm. But what if you like white wines better than reds, or what if you think white Zinfandel is delicious? What if the sales clerk suggests an expensive red wine that the back label describes as "having a tightly focused core of tobacco and black cherry with a long finish of silky tannins." Excuse me, what was that? The likely conclusion is that many of us abandon our own good sense or good taste for fear of making a "mistake," and we decide to play it safe and bring home some cold beer.
It doesn't have to be like that. The truth is wine tastes good with grilled food. Period. In fact, our friend Tim Hanni, a Master of Wine (nice title, huh?) from Napa Valley, California, explains that the whole concept of "matching" food and wine is a relatively new custom. Hundreds of years ago, folks in France and Italy didn't get caught up in the innumerable rules we are expected to memorize today. Even the gourmands typically drank the same wine, whatever was produced in their region, with whatever they were eating. Easy and delicious. For us, it's grown considerably more complicated because we have so many styles of wine to choose from. So, your biggest challenge as you stare at that wall of wine is just to pick the kind of wine you like, regardless of the food. If you are entertaining a group, the considerate thing to do is to pick a few different styles of wine-red and white, dry and sweet-and let your guests find their favorites. That's the gist of it.
That said, Tim offers two sensible principles to finesse your wine-and-food combinations.
Sweet Foods Will Make Wine Taste Stronger.
That is, the wine (no matter what kind of wine) will taste more acidic and possibly more bitter when you drink it with sweet food. Some people like this, some don't. For example, a sweet barbecue sauce may make a red wine taste just too strong for some folks, while others will relish the newfound gusto in the wine. For those who find the wine too acidic, there is an easy solution. Squeeze a few drops of lemon juice or sprinkle just a tiny pinch of salt on your food. The acidity or saltiness will balance with the sweetness of the sauce and make the wine taste milder, which brings us to the second principle....
Acidic Or Salty Foods Will Make Wine Taste Milder.
No matter what kind of wine you are drinking, if the food is acidic or salty, the wine will taste less acidic and less bitter. This is great news if you are sipping a wine that seems too strong for your taste. Drink the wine with whatever you like (chicken, fish, meat, etc.), but serve the food with a tangy salsa or a soy-based sauce, for example. You'll be amazed how that salsa's lime juice or the soy's saltiness tames the wildness of wine. On the other hand, if the wine seems a little underwhelming, give the food some sweetness by brushing on a glaze or adding a pinch of sugar to the sauce. The wine will perk up right away.
These are useful principles but the real key here is that if the food you are grilling is balanced--that is, if it is not particularly sweet or acidic or salty--it will not significantly change the character of any wine. Just about all of the recipes in this book are balanced in this way, so simply find the wines you like and drink up. You can enjoy your favorites and your guest can enjoy theirs--all with the same food.
From Weber’s Big Book of Grilling. Copyright © 2001 Weber-Stephen Products Co. All rights reserved. First published by Chronicle Books LLC, San Francisco, California.
This 20-Which Wine? Drink What You Like recipe is from the Weber's Big Book of Grilling Cookbook. Download this Cookbook today.
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