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A Match Made in Heaven

Written By: Brian Freedman on Friday, September 7, 2007

Pairing Propriety and the Lack Thereof

At a wonderful new wine bar and restaurant outside Philadelphia earlier this week, as I was asking the sommelier what I should pair with half a roasted chicken, I realized something. Or, to be more accurate, the sommelier made a point that I’ve been thinking about for quite some time now.

After pausing for a second and then rattling off what my options were in terms of pairing partners, the sommelier paused, smiled, and then reconsidered.

“You know what?” he said. “Just go with the malbec.”

“How come?” I asked.

“Because even though the pairing won’t be perfect,” he continued, “both the chicken and the wine are so good on their own that it won’t really matter. And I want you to taste the malbec.”

This, of course, brings up an interesting point. Because many of us, both wine-business professionals and amateur lovers of the grape, often find ourselves getting all hot and bothered over whether a specific wine will match perfectly with  a specific dish. And while trying to decide whether or not the pairing will work is certainly an interesting intellectual exercise, it is not the end-all-be-all sort of issue that so many of us make it out to be.

Several months ago, after teaching a nighttime wine class that didn’t end until after 9:30, I met my wife and another couple back at my apartment. My friend owns a restaurant in the city, and, like me, hadn’t eaten since earlier that evening. This, of course, meant one thing: Delivery from Chinatown.

Mu shu pork, spring rolls, vegetable fried rice, spare ribs, lo mein, shrimp with hot black-bean sauce—spread out on the kitchen table, this Asian cornucopia was a reasonably obscene sight to behold…in a good way, of course.

And then we started rooting through my cellar, trying to find the perfect pairing partner for all this gloriously greasy food. But every time we happened across a bottle that would have worked in the more classical sense—a riesling, a Prosecco, some great cheap bottles of rose—we bypassed it. Because more than anything else, we were in the mood for syrah.

In fact, after a few fruitless minutes of searching for a wine that would appropriately match the food and appeal to out palates that night, my friend said something very similar to what the sommelier did earlier this week: “Screw it,” he said. “If we’re in the mood for syrah, then let’s just drink syrah.”

Which we did—a fabulous bottle from California’s Edna Valley, rich in berry flavors and possessed of a deliciously creamy mouthfeel that did nothing to cut through the textures of the food.

But none of that sort of analysis mattered. Because the pairing, to us at least, on that night and with that meal, was perfect. Not because of anything inherently appropriate about the interaction of the wine and the food, but because we were in the mood for it.

Sometimes, it pays to just drink what you’re craving and get on with it. If both the food and the wine are what you’re in the mood for, don’t let any sense of formality or so-called pairing propriety get in your way. It worked with that chicken and malbec, and it worked with that Chinese food and syrah.

I suppose the rule, then, goes something like this: As long as it works with your palate, then it’s a perfectly fine pairing.

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