Local Wines Do Often Pair Well With Local Foods

I've certainly heard this more than once or twice or three times. If you don't know what to pair with local foods, try local wines. But, is there really any merit or logic to that?

There is. Particularly if the food is truly local as compared to a dish, for example, popularized on the Greek island of Santorini, but prepared in, say, Argentina. What's with the local?

Consider a dish that is truly local to your area. The key ingredients came from your area. So, the vegetables might have been planted in the local soil. The meat came from animals raised locally or the fish from local streams.

Similarly, the grapes having been planted in local soil will carry the same terroir markers as the dish. People who have been with us for two months or more will recall our reporting on terroir fingerprints, the very unique characteristics that allow really fine and experienced tasters to be able to identify the vineyard that was the origin of the grapes simply by the taste and smell.

I've not seen a study on it and frankly, I have not looked. But, I am betting that if there are, for example, kohlrabi fanatics, that the super-tasters among them can identify where that kohlrabi comes from. That is, the kohlrabi also has a terroir fingerprint.

Now, suppose that both your wine and your kohlrabi have similar and complementary local fingerprints. Then there is a natural pairing chemistry, a yin and a yang, that bring the two of them together. It's like Astaire and Rogers, Bogey and Bacall. The whole is bigger than the sum of the parts.

And, that is why there really is something to going local with wine when you are going local with food. But, remember, just because you make them in Georgia doesn't make your Australian lamb local, That would ne like saying that when you open a Pinot Noir from Beaune in Nigeria that it is suddenly a west African wine.

But, if all else fails, match the origin of the food with the origin of the wine. There is some science to it.