The sommelier was right. The glass of 2005 Martin Ray “Angeline” riesling was a wonderful match for the cream-of-cauliflower soup with pumpkin oil and wild mushrooms. My husband’s 2004 Susanna Balbo malbec was equally lovely with his herb-roasted buffalo ribeye. In fact, every wine-and-food pairing suggested by Meritage chef Daniel Bruce and sommelier Jonas Atwood was fabulous. But why? Is it the body? Is it the dryness or the fruitiness, or the way it wrinkles your tongue? What do wine-savvy chefs and sommeliers mean when they say a wine is perfectly matched to a dish? What balance of flavors are they seeking to create? I’ve been to numerous wine dinners, always returning home slightly sloshed and deliriously content. But I still don’t know how sommeliers and chefs make a pairing, how they make their decisions about what works and what does not.
Should a specific wine and dish fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, bringing out hidden flavor qualities that are only unlocked in this particular combination? Or is the goal of a wine-and-food pairing to make the contrast of tastes more emphatic, more distinct? I asked some local experts: Daniel Bruce, executive chef of the Boston Harbor Hotel and the founding energy behind the Boston Wine Festival, and Jeannie Rogers, owner of Waltham’s Il Capriccio and Italian-wine-importing company Adona, and considered by many to have one of the best wine palates in the country.
Bruce, who’s likely been asked the question before, has a quick answer. “Contrast, complement, and parallel,” he says of pairing. There isn’t one definitive way to make a match, but several schools of thought. Bruce plays with all kinds of pairings, usually using more than one approach in any multi-course meal — e.g., the appetizer-and-wine pairing may be a complement, the fish entrée a parallel pairing, and the meat course a real point/counterpoint contrast. “It’s not like there’s just one perfect wine,” says Bruce. “Lots of wines can be perfect with a particular dish; they are just perfect in different ways.”
Unlike most diners — and many chefs — Bruce begins with the wine and then creates a meal around it. “Let’s say I taste blueberry, or vanilla, or some earthy, peaty, nutmeg-y tones in a wine,” he explains. “I think about a constructing a dish that might have those same flavors, or might have ingredients that pair with or cut through the flavors of the wine, or I’ll assemble a dish that will play off the wine and create a new and quirky combination. Maybe I’ll dust cocoa on a duck breast and serve it with a wine that has hints of chocolate. Or if a wine has lots of citrus, I might think about adding a hint of grated orange peel. Sometimes, a wine is so allied with the flavors of the food of its region or terroir — often true for many French and Italian wines — that I decide to stick with more traditional seasonings and preparations.”
