Q. We’re out at a restaurant with a group of friends and, of course, everyone is ordering different foods. But I’ve been asked to pick out a couple of bottles of wine for the table. Help! Jim F., Denver.
A. When faced with an array of foods, I’m in search of the wine world’s most flexible food wines. At a restaurant, the easy way out is to order a bunch of wines by the glass. But a better way is to take the elevator.
Old-fashioned elevators have a fan-shaped indicator over their doors, with an arm that sweeps back and forth through however many floors are in the building, indicating where the elevator is at any given time.
For me, food and wine matchups are a matter of finding which wines sweep through as many floors as possible at—well, let’s call it—Amalgamated Food Headquarters.
For example, floor number one is, say, chicken tenders poached in plain water. The top floor would be live bear. In between is everything else you could eat. Vegetable and fruit dishes, white meats, pink meats, all the red meats and chewy things, the spices, the chilies, everything.
And the oenoscenti tell me merely “Red wine with red meat.” Right.
Thankfully, some wine pairings are easy. About the only wine for chicken tenders poached in plain water is a cheap, wussy Italian Pinot Grigio. (I sometimes serve Evian because it has more flavor.)
And one of the only wines to serve with live bear is a California Zinfandel at 17% alcohol.
Neither wine tastes tasty with much anything else.
What I want, then, both for my palate and my pocketbook, are wines that sweep, like the lobby elevator’s arrow, as many floors as possible.
Vinho Verde from Portugal or off dry Riesling from Germany or Washington that can get me all the way to veal or grilled mushrooms; perfumed Pinot Noir that can go from salmon or swordfish and climb plenty of floors; sparkling wines (as long as they’re well made, best in the “Champagne method”) for a clink of the glass from nearly bottom to top.
Drier, leaner reds and whites that marry food successfully have humble flavor profiles and moderate alcohol. They sit back and let the flavors and textures of the food play against them. Village-level Chablis, for example, or a Mâcon-Villages; a good Grüner Veltliner, the ever-ready rosé. Rioja reds can climb; so, too, can some smooth Chilean cabernets and many a Sangiovese (especially those from Chianti). Ditto for most Beaujolais and several off-beat grape varieties such as Pais or Mondeuse.
Watch out for clumsy, oafish wines loaded with alcohol, tannin, and oak. All they'll do is impress the table’s guests (the wrong way), heighten the sensations of salt in the cooking, and tire the palates of all those seated at table.
Going up.