The Curse of the Wine-Killer Foods and Ways to Get Past Them

It's sad. There are some very good foods and food ingredients that have a way of killing the wines we serve with them. Does that mean we should stop eating those foods or that we should stop drinking wine with them?

It turns out the answer is neither. We just need to be more careful about how we are pairing them.

Fair warning before you read further that this might get a little bit or a lot geeky. Then again, I might change my mind and it might not be geeky at all. We shall see as my flying fingers tap dance on my keyboard.

Let's start with an easy one, relatively speaking: chocolate. Now, as chocolate afficionados of which I am not one know, there are all different varieties of chocolate: sweet, semi-sweet, bitter, mik, different percentages, and more. They all have different characteristics, but they also all have a commonality. They are all ultimately a byproduct of the cocoa beans that come from the cacao tree. Probably the biggest challenge in chocolate is the pyrocyanidins. 

I'm going to be honest. I have no idea what a pyrocyanidin is, but I do know that it is an alternative way to spell bitter. Yes, every piece of chocolate, no matter what else it has, has an element of bitterness or astringency to it. And wine and bitter are not good friends.

But there are exceptions and I'm going to give you three of them.

Port. Port goes with chocolate because the sweetness and high alcohol content do a good job of balancing the astringency. So, chocoholic? Keep a lot of Port in the house.

Madeira. Madeira  tends to have very high acidity. Certain styles, such as Malmsey, are also naturally quite sweet. The combinatiion calms down the bitterness in the chocolate. And with a rich, dark chocolate, the additional sweetness in the Malmsey (when pairing sweet wines with sweets, the wine should always be sweeter than the food) makes for an excellent pairing.

Banyuls. As we know with [almost] all French wines, the name is actually the region and not a grape. Banyuls, in a nutshell is fortified Grenache. When aged on oak, it has caramel, coffee, and often hazelnut notes while the younger versions tend to be loaded up with black cherry and raisin. Think about how well all those notes pair with chocolate. And, the sweeter the chocolate, the more you want the oak-aged versions.

How about hot peppers, particularly chile peppers? They are loaded up with capsaicin, the chemical substance that produces the heat. 

What is capsaicin? It's a fat-soluble, but not water-soluble alkyloid.

That should send a message to wine drinkers, but often it doesn't. What I have seen frequently is that people try to overpower it. That is, they throw a big, bold, over-extracted hot weather Cabernet Sauvignon (think Austin Hope among overpriced wines you can buy at Costco) at it and their palates get irreparably confused. 

You simply cannot overpower large quantities of capsaicin. No way, no how!!

Go softer with lower levels of alcohol instead. Consider off-dry or even sweet wines. And tend toward aromatics where the high-terpene content will likely balance the heat from the capsaicin. Riseling, Gewurtzraminer, Pinot Noir and Grenache come to mind. Or go for a rose that is predominantly Grenache or Cinsault.

Let's try some artichokes. And then let's try to find a wine to go with them. 

Some of you might remember the acid-base equation from basic high school chemistry. Acid + base = salt + water. There is a similar one for artichokes. Artichokes plus tannins equals tin can plus (does it really matter what else?). That's right; if you drink something like Tannat with artichokes, the Tannat will taste like tin. It's both a waste of money and disgusting.

Artichokes are rich in nutrients and all of the nutrients that artichokes are rich in absolutely hate tannins. So let's go the opposite direction: high acidity and white. My first choice is Gruner Veltliner, followed by Vermentino (if you want something richer), but if you are focused on the grapes you can find more easily, go for Sauvignon Blanc or Albarino, particularly the bottles whose contents have never seen oak.

How about raw onions and raw garlic? One is bad for wine, the other is worse, and I'll let you decide which is which. 

Visitors to San Francisco might have faced this problem. There is a restaurant there call the Stinking Rose. It's a garlic restaurant. Yes, you can get garlic ice cream or garlic cake. I digress, but it's still tough for wine pairings.

Let's bring back acidity to save the day. Cooler climate Sauvignon Blanc, or perhaps better yet, Sauvignon Blanc grown in moderate climates that have warm afternoons and cool nights with typical overnight fog are probably perfect. Think Marlborough. Think Sancerre. Think Chile. Think Picpoul de Pinet.

How about eggs? Eggs have high sulfur content and sulfur also does not like wine. In particular, sulfur does not like tannins and it does not like oak (oak imparts tannins as well). 

In my experience, most people do not drink wine with their morning eggs, but that's most people. And if they are, it seems to me it is more likely to occur when we are out for brunch that when we are just scrambling some eggs up at home. Think Eggs Benedict or your favorite omelette.

You want a good pairing with them? Champagne. That's right; a touch of the bubbly. High acidity, lack of tannins. Or perhaps Beaujolais to complement the savory meets and seasonings that often wind up in omelettes. Again, no tannins, no oak. They are not your friends here.

Brussels Sprouts are very popular in the 21st century. Fortunately, the wise scientists that breed Brussels Sprouts (I have no idea what the Brussels Sprout specialists are called) realized that the 20th century version was horribly obnoxious. Bitter to a fault and tasting like boiled down leaves, they were every sane child's worst nightmare, but with the new version with some bitter left out of the test tubes, they are now on the menu at every restaurant worth a good review. Even Waffle House will probably have them as an option on their hash browns soon. 

In pairing generally, you come to a fork in the road. And as Lawrence Peter Berra sagely informed us, when we come to said fork, we should take it. But which tine of the fork? Do we complement or contrast or in more food and wine related terms, do we pair with similar flavors or opposing flavors.

If you like the contrasting approach, Try a Chenin Blanc from Vouvray. Rounded and aromatic, this should balance the intense nutty flavor and the bitterness that those scientists still haven't taken out.

On the other hand, like most green vegetables, Brussels Sprouts are loaded up with 2,3- methoxypyrazine, the compund that gives green bell peppers their green bell pepper flavor. No, they are not as green bell peppery and green bell peppers, but they have those notes. What else has those notes? Cabernet Franc, and to a lesser extent, Sauvignon Blanc, and Cabernet Sauvignon. So, if you want to complement, head in one of those directions.

We could go on, but that's enough for now. I guess the message, generally speaking, is that if the food is hard to pair with, lower alcohol content and higher acidity tends to be the winner. 

And if you just like the grape you like and choose to avoid my advice, when you know your pairing is wrong, do it with a cheap wine.