"True Facts" Wine IS Food - Goes WITH Food Part I

There once was a time when we only needed one set of immutable rules for pairing wine with food – red wine goes with meat, white wine goes with fish. Let’s face it, these were rules for Brits and Americans. Soldiers returning home from remote stations in Europe after WWII brought back tales of cultures and customs filled with local wines paired with indigenous foods. Those wines were carried back and later imported as well, but Britain and the American heartland were/are not known for their/our indigenous cuisine! So what wine pairing rule translated best for the meat and potato cultures? Red wine with meat, white wine with fish! Done! Now pass the gravy.

The world seems a lot more complicated now. Expectations for a host or hostess are high, what with the Food Network beaming HD images of glorious culinary creations, and food/wine magazines touting the latest fusion cooking crazes from across the globe. My Facebook feed sends food porn pictures right to my smart phone! I can haz wine with my dinner now?

At the most fundamental level, wine and food pairing rules are still just as simple as ever. The extremely basic mantra is to drink what you like (go ahead, have that Cabernet with sushi, and wash your pepperoni pizza down with Chardonnay!). And in a pinch you can dredge up the old stand-by of red with meat and white with fish – there’s validity here. But there are times and occasions when you want to have things just right - you want to impress on a date, say, or put on the perfect dinner party with wine to match each course. You may even find yourself holding the book-like wine list in a nice restaurant and wondering how to order a bottle that makes everyone happy. So here are some additional rather simple guidelines to pairing wine with your meal.

Understanding that certain general wine and flavor reactions occur will help lay some foundations. First some basic principles of taste:

Tannins go well with fat! Tannins are those naturally astringent qualities found in grape skins, as well as walnuts, tea, tamarinds, etc. They are perceived in your mouth as a drying sensation; like cottonmouth if present in excess.  Tannins are softened by animal fat and protein, and the coupling enhances the flavor of both food and wine. Ribeye and a Barolo, anyone?


Salty food can enhance the flavor of wine. It lowers the perceived acidity and it even sweetens the wine a bit. Think of tasting a lime sprinkled with salt and how it seems both sweeter and less tart. But the aforementioned tannins can get unpleasant in the presence of salty things, even becoming a bit metallic tasting. Something to keep in mind.


Acid in wine is that tangy or sour sensation you get on the sides of your tongue. A wine’s acidity is probably the primary characteristic making it such an enjoyable beverage with food. Acidity cuts through fat and richness in a dish, melds with and softens tangy flavors and cleanses the palate for the next bite of food. Salty foods and foods with vinegar or citrus are outstanding when paired with acidic wines, especially Champagne and bubblies and crisp, lean whites.


Sweet wines are ideal for taming heat in food. A little bit of residual sugar helps to tone down spicy Asian, Cajun or Latin dishes. A sweeter wine can be a magical accompaniment to spicy-sweet Thai or Szechuan fare, for instance. However, if the wine is tannic or high in alcohol expect the heat to intensify and the food to taste even spicier! Pair wisely here, my friends.
And sweet wines are exactly what you want to pair with desserts. Sweet with heat, sweet with sweet, and, surprisingly, sweet with savory. More on this later.  


Oak – this element in a wine can pair with most anything toasty, nutty, creamy, buttery or garlicky. Oak adds weight and texture to a wine, making it more suitable to food preparations that themselves incorporate elements of weight and richness.    




Next Up: Which wine goes with cotton candy?

"True Facts" Filtered Controversy

Wanna start a fight with a winemaker? Just take a side on the filtering issue and you are guaranteed a feisty discussion. Magazine writers and wine reviewers fawn when they see “unfined, unfiltered” on a label, so it follows that consumers just accept a view that a filtered wine is therefore something less, having had aspects of a its aroma and palate filtered out. The best filtration is no filtration! But is that entirely true?



Filtration is a common practice in winemaking even if not everyone agrees on its necessity to create great wine. Some winemakers brag that their wines are unfiltered and therefore better. The argument goes that filtration can rob wine of desired qualities, such as taste and smell, leaving a wine that is clear to look at yet without character, and further justified with the mantra that wine should be manipulated as little as possible. Those braggarts tell us to believe that an unfiltered wine has more intense flavors, texture and aroma.

Let’s agree that when possible, wine should not be filtered.  The less a wine is needlessly tampered with, the better. Filtration by definition removes something; some character from a wine.  Some of this character invariably contributes to the texture and aromatics of a wine. Filtering also adds an additional step to the bottling process and increases the risk of oxidation as the wine goes from filtration to bottle.

Why Filter Then?

Filtration involves removing sediment, grape skins, dead yeast and other particles from wine by passing it through filter media that has (microscopic) holes big enough for the wine to pass through yet small enough to catch any floating particles. Judicious filtration removes yeast, microbes and other larger solids while still allowing the tiny molecules that are responsible for color, flavor and aroma to pass through the filters, allowing clarity and brilliance to be achieved. Using a filter properly does nothing but remove undesirable microorganisms and solids and should not have any major effect on flavor and aroma.

The experienced and pragmatic winemaker knows that there are serious risks involved in bottling a wine with an unknown load of bacteria and, perhaps, yeast. there are a significant number of wines on the shelves in retail stores with the telltale signs of post-bottling microbial growth. Filtering largely removes that risk and, therefore, it is often standard procedure.

Filtration makes a wine “brighter,” meaning clearer, and attractive to look through in the glass. Myself and most of the wine drinking community expect a wine to pour clear, not cloudy and opaque.  A winery may decide to filter for strictly this cosmetic reason.  But as previously said, a winery may decide not to filter their wines because they feel that too much of the wine is left on the filter media, and that the unfiltered wines taste better and have superior mouthfeel. 

To filter or not to filter involves compromises on both sides of the question. What I find from talking with many winemakers is that the filtration question becomes a philosophical, even emotional one rather than a practical one based on logic.
 
One could make a convincing argument that carefully made fine red wine that has been matured in barrel shouldn’t even need filtering.  Racked off after spending months in wood a wine should be stable against problems caused by protein and tartrates, as well as yeast and bacteria problems. By the time the winemaker has coarse filtered and fine filtered, the wine is already brilliant.


As a practical matter, in some cases filtering is an absolute necessity. Such as the case for any wines containing residual sugar. It could be entirely necessary for wines containing malic acid - to prevent malolactic fermentation in bottle. Similarly, wines intended for short-term consumption often don't have the acidity, or alcohol and tannin levels that offer resistance to biological instability. Wines made for ageability and to be cellared might be expected to have a little sediment after some years, but most consumers have little understanding or tolerance for the appearance of natural crystals and deposits in an early-drinking wine. 

This means that pretty much all white wines should probably be filtered to a sterile degree. For a red wine where absolutely no Brettanomyces influence is to be acceptable, then a winery really has to weigh filtration’s slight effect on mouthfeel against the chance that the wine will smell like a barnyard in a year or two. 


Winemakers and consumer should be cautious of building a philosophical argument on a practical issue like filtration. If you want the benefits of labeling your wine as unfiltered, you had better take the trouble to ensure that the wine you bottle contains no more than a minute quantity of viable cells, and that your customers won’t be put off by an opaque appearance or sediment. A balance of a low level of bacteria combined with a relatively high level of sulfur dioxide would be the aim for a wine that is not going to be filtered. 




What's Involved

Wineries use filtration systems with a series of different grades of pads (or cartridges). The process begins with the wine being filtered through coarse filter pads, then may continue undergoing a second "fine" filtration, using clarifying filter pads, followed by a third "polish" filtration, which can result in the wine taking on a brilliant clarity. A final step, "sterile" filtration, uses membrane filters that are fine enough to remove yeast cells, thus preventing further fermentation.

The sterile filters commonly used nowadays are usually a tight depth filter depth and then a membrane filter.

Sources: www.winebusiness.com, and Gary Baldwin - Australian wine consultant

"True Facts" Diamonds Aren't Enough

Diamonds (and wine!) are a girl’s best friend, but who’s friend are those “diamonds” IN your wine?

You see them as sparkly purple bits on the end of a wine cork or as crusty bits coating the sides of an empty wine glass. They appear like coarse sugar crystals or even as shards of glass when you pour out that last bit of Chardonnay. While not exactly appetizing or appealing, these bits of sediment aren’t UN-friendly. In fact their appearance is a sign of wine as a natural product.

Whether purple stained, creamy colored or clear, these crystals are called tartrates or potassium bitartrates. In your kitchen you will recognize this as an ingredient from your baking cabinet known as cream of tartar! In fact, the cream of tartar you use to stabilize egg whites for meringue is also in the baking powder that you use to make your muffins rise, and it was probably created as a byproduct of someone’s winemaking efforts.

Tartaric acid is the dominant acid in grapes/ wine and in the presence of potassium (it too is natural in wine) and cool temperatures this “salt” or crystalline form is precipitated. Cold temperatures can also be utilized to prevent the tartrates from forming in your bottle. Winemakers will chill vats or containers of wine (especially white) in a process called “cold stabilization” in order to force the creation of the tartrates so that the crystals can be filtered out prior to bottling.

Winemakers will take the extra steps to cold stabilize their wines simply because the uninitiated wine drinker may become alarmed by the crystals at the bottom of his/her bottle or glass. No need for alarm or concern! They are completely harmless and natural and they won’t poison you or slice up your tongue!

What about filtering? Some winemakers brag that their wines are unfiltered and therefore better. More about whether this true next week.