The Perils of Pairing

What put me into rant mode was the cover of the current (October) issue of Food & Wine, but it could have been anything. The issue promises “7 easy rules for pairing, plus 67 wine-friendly recipes,” all under the page-wide banner, “wine made simple.”

Where do I start? What exactly is a “wine-friendly” recipe,” and how does it differ from a “normal” recipe, and are we to presume that previous issues have offered “wine-hostile” recipes? If you need to follow at least seven rules before putting wine and food in your mouth at the same sitting, how “simple” is this stuff, really? And for that matter, who decided that wine should be “simple”?

The rules themselves aren’t all that bad, and the recipes I’m sure are fine, but the whole business embodies a peculiarly American obsession with offering guidance about food and wine pairing. People in other countries, ones that have real wine cultures—not sure what this means, but these countries also tend to have universal health care and strict gun control—just drink wine and eat food, and they’re quite content. Here we seem to need classes, experts, a shelf full of guidebooks, endless magazine pieces, a whole industry where none is required. The subtext seems to be that if the unwashed masses just open a random bottle with their random dinner, they will instantly experience lockjaw, or food poisoning, or terminal social disgrace. And it’s simply not true.

Here’s the only food and wine pairing rule anybody needs, and the only one that’s bulletproof, so write this down: drink wine you like with food you like. Works every time.

The proliferation of pairing rules (and rule-givers), like the plague of 100-point wine rating scales, assumes that the palates of wine drinkers are uniform—there’s a “right” and “wrong” combination for everyone, just as this wine is four points “better” than that one. There is absolutely no science to support this covert hypothesis, and a truckload of sensory research indicating that people’s palates are all over the map: what I crave may literally make you gag.

There is also no science that documents the supposedly magical qualities of certain combinations of food and wine. When UC Davis sensory researcher Hildegarde Heymann decided to do a systematic, exhaustive review of the rigorous, controlled studies in the field she found . . . there basically weren’t any. Her own research indicates that there is one safe generalization: any food will muffle the sensory qualities of any wine—no surprise, since the wine’s acid and tannin and fruit are now competing with the properties of the food for the mouth’s attention.

The pairing police, however, aren’t about to be confused with facts. They’re on a  civilizing mission, bringing enlightenment and self-discipline to those who dare approach the temple of fine wine. Absurdities abound. One of my recent favorites came in the June/July issue of Saveur, the bible of foodie authenticity, focused on steak; a fascinating central article by Betty Fussell was paired with a sidebar suggesting what wine to have with which steak. The San Francisco Chronicle wine section did a feature piece a while back on pairing with Indian food, which started off fine and ended up suggesting obscure wines no one could possible find on any wine list in any Indian restaurant on earth .

On a grander scale, much critical praise (and an award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals) has been bestowed on What to Drink with What You Eat, a hefty hardback guide to sorting out this alleged conundrum. The heart of the book, hundreds of pages, is devoted to the results of polling sommeliers across the country, asking them what they would pair with what. Turns out they would pair a lot of very different things with any given menu item. In other words, you don’t need the book, you just need that one simple rule: drink wine you like with food you like.

I want to see one of thee pairing-fixated magazine take up the real dilemma facing chefs and diners: how to pair the side matter that goes on the plate with the protein centerpiece. This is stuff you really do have in your mouth at the same time. I mean, surely there are right and wrong vegetables to go with pork chops, and only certain fruits that can be made into reduction sauces for leg of lamb; the difference between short-grain and long-grain rice could determine the fate of a sea bass filet, right?

Meantime, all the fuss over wine pairing makes me want to drink more beer.