LIGHTER REDS
When I ponder pairing wine and food, looking for the right match of liquid and larder, I picture myself standing in an elevator lobby of a very large, rather tall building.
All the food in the world is in that building, all the many bases of different animal or aquatic protein, all the globe’s vegetables and carbs, and all the various preparations that cooks work those with: Asian salt and heat, American char and sugar, Italian and French fats and fancies. Every permutation possible, food for a Jain vegan to an eater of Bison Tartare, all in one big, tall building.
On the first floor of the building are eats such as unadorned tofu or chicken tenders poached in water. On the top floor, whichever the number (it doesn’t matter), is live bear. All else is in between.
What I want to do is taste and enjoy as many of the world’s foods and their preparations with as many different kinds of wines as would marry them well. So I look for the sweep of the elevator’s controls, as in those old-fashioned arrow pointers that fanned over the floor numbers as the car went up or down.
The best wines for me to choose are those that can handle a ride to as many floors as possible. The least useful are those that niche themselves onto only one or two floors. For the first floor, a lot of Italian pinot grigio works—or better, Evian, because it has more flavor. For the live bear, a head-banging 17 percent alcohol California red will do.
Either wine fits only with a few foods only; they work well there but there only.
To speak about just red wines here, the more flexible are what we can call “the lighter reds,” those easy of tannin, moderate of alcohol, medium-weight in body and less extracted of fruit and phenol.
Such red wines taste delicious with white, pink and many red meats, with both mild and spicy foods, with vegetable-based preparations and a raft of cheeses.
Well-made pinot noir is such a wine, whether from its kingdom of Burgundy or as it appears in most all winemaking countries such as the U.S., New Zealand or Germany (yes, Germany, home to some of the most electric pinots to be had, sometimes there called “blauburgunder,” such a delicious name).
But there is a world of lighter red beyond pinot noir, too. Try good cru Beaujolais from France, for example, or Chinon from the Loire.
In northern Spain they make one of the world’s great lighter reds from the tempranillo grape (sometimes with ancillary grapes of mazuelo and graciano, but just for flavor and texture notes) in the Rioja district. Or, also from Spain, a mencia from around the hilly region of Bierzo.
Notice something going on with these wines? They are, by and large, from cooler climates that do not ripen red grapes into sporting boorish fruit, thick tannins and potentially high alcohol.
Italy sports tsunamis of such reds: the schiava, dolcetto and barbera from the North, Valpolicella’s reds or Chianti from any of several subregions of Tuscany’s Chianti district such as Rufina or many of the named “hill districts” such as Colli Senesi or Colli Fiorentini.
Experiment with some of the newer ways with Emilia-Romagna’s great light red, Lambrusco, in its more modern, drier forms, always amenable to a chill from the frig or ice bucket.
Keep in mind that it’s the globe’s lighter reds that will put you palate in good stead with as wide a range of foods as you wish to enjoy.