Another welcome to Toby Chiles, our
most popular host as evidenced by the turnout on the evening. Toby had arranged
for the wines to be blind-tasted, including the welcome sparkling wine which
turned out to be a Moldovan Radacini Blanc De Noir. Blanc De Noir, of course,
means a white wine made from a black grape, in this case Cabernet Sauvignon.
Thereafter the purpose of the blind tasting was to prevent preconceptions of the wine before tasting it. Each wine was paired with a carefully selected food item (or two). This was not food-wine pairing in the normal sense of which dishes go with which particular wines. Instead, it was an exploration of how food can influence the flavour and feel of wines. Therefore, we tasted each wine on its own before tasting it with the matching food item. Just for fun, before the wine was revealed, Toby asked if people wanted to guess the wine.
The wine and food combinations were:
White Muscat (Samos Vin Doux,
Greece) with Pate
Gewurztraminer (Cave de Turkheim,
France) with Boursin Garlic Cheese
Chardonnay (Bread and Butter,
California) with Smoked Mackerel & Horseradish Pate
Malbec (Dada Art 391 Fina Las Moras,
Argentina) with (i) salt and (ii) salami (high fat content)
Shiraz (Bird in Hand, Australia)
with (i) Cheddar and (ii) Parmesan
Fortified wine (Moscatel de Douro
Cadao, Portugal) with (i) blue cheese and (ii) dark chocolate
The pairings were very carefully
chosen by Toby. Unfortunately, I was so engrossed in understanding the impact
of the food on the wine I forgot to take notes. However, Toby very kindly
filled in the gaps in my memory.
With aromatic wines of lower
acidity, such as Gewurztraminer, the heat and flavour in spices like garlic (hence the Boursin) and
chilli is lifted and/or tempered by the wine.
Creamy or buttery wines, such as
Bread and Butter Chardonnay, are rich in flavour and body, so the food
accompaniment also needs to be rich either because of the sauce, or the main
ingredient, in this case, smoked oily mackerel blended with crème fraiche,
cream, lemon and horseradish to give it extra flavour and body.
For Malbec, salt reacts with tannin
to soften the effects and thus the wine tastes smoother. The same is true for Salami,
but with salami fat is also present which softens the tannins in wine further.
Hence the reason that salty snacks and charcuterie go so well with red wine.
The sweetness of fortified wine
matches and enhances blue cheese through a reaction between sugar and the penicillin
mould on soft salty cheese. While, the high alcohol content of the wine tempers
the bitterness in dark chocolate.
