Difficult Foods to Pair With Wine

We've written a lot in here over time about pairing although it's not necessarily been a primary focus. There are some foods, however, that we don't mention very often. It's not because we hate those foods, but because those foods are just top on the person doing the pairing.

Number one on my list is ginger. And, it's not because ginger is inherently difficult to pair with, but because ginger is a very distinctive flavor requiring particular types of wine, but it's also pretty unusual to eat ginger alone and the types of dishes that ginger goes in often don't pair with the same wines as the strong ginger flavor does. Got that?

Ginger is spicy and it carries with it a mild amount of heat. When I see the word or taste heat, my mind goes to aromatic white wines often with some residual sugar. Alternatively, I go to a very full-bodied white wine that lingers on the palate for long enough to absorb the spice and heat.

So, with ginger, I look to an off-dry Alsatian grape such as Riesling or Pinot Gris or perhaps a Condrieu. The first complements the heat and spice in the ginger while the second somewhat neutralizes it. 

This leaves a problem though. Some ginger-laden dishes are also loaded with beef. And with beef, we trnd to drink red wine. If we must, we need to look to extremely food-friendly red wines. And, little, if anything is more food-friendly than Pinot Noir, particularly in a Burgundian style or Sangiovese, both having their excellent acidity.

Next on the list are Brussels sprouts. I have to tell you that for the first roughly 45 years of my life, I hated Brussels sprouts. So, not only would I not pair wine with them, I wouldn't eat them unless I was left without a choice. But, I found that there were preparations very different than those I had had until then and now this is one of my very favorite vegetables.

Why do we hate pairing with Brussels sprouts. One of the major flavor components comes from the sulphur compounds prevalent in Brussels sprouts. And, what do you do if you're served a wine with sulphur smells? Send it back or pour it out.

Personally, I like the food enough (now) and I like wine enough that I jsut get past it. In addition, most Brussels sprouts that I eat are prepared with significant other flavors that tend to mask the sulphur as well as the nuttiness. But, sometimes they're not.

What to do, what to do.

White wines tend to exhibit much more herbaceousness (I'm not sure that is a word, but it is now) when the growing season was particularly cool. So, we might look to an aromatic white from a very cool climate from a very cool growing season. That is often spelled Gruner Veltliner. Alternatively, go for the nuttiness of a dry Madeira.

There are many more, but the food that I most often see mis-paired is chocolate. What do we know about chocolate. It's somewhat earthy. It's sweet and fatty. And, it's tannic. Yes, chocolate has tannins and that makes it good for you, at least to some extent (the fats and sugars likely make it less healthy). Pairing big, bold red wines with chocolate does work occasionally, but more often than not, the wine diminishes the chocolate and the chocolate the wine. That's not the goal.

A classic pairing with chocolate mousse known for its richness and texture is vintage port. The sweetness of the wine (remember that a sweet wine should be sweeter than the food it is served with) compared with the rasiny notes make for a pairing that enhanes both. And, Tawny Port, particularly 10-year, tends to be loaded with cinnamon notes and we all know that cinnamon and chocolate pair nicely.

But, nothing pairs with chocolate, in my opinion, like Banyuls. Banyuls is a late harvest Grenache not surprisingly from the commune of Banyuls or one of the surrounding villages. In the far southeast corner of France not far from Barcelona, Spain, Banyuls wines must predominate in Grenache. They are made in a fashion similar to Port where alcohol is added to the must to stop fermentation and retain residual sugar. The wines themselves have a pleasant as compared to overbearing sweetness and are loaded with raspberry and black raspberry notes. As difficult as it is to pair with chocolate, Banyuls makes it work as if the two were made for each other.