Pairing Schmairing... Finding the best food and wine combinations

Nikki:

So first let's talk about what is body in wine. So body is kind of the weight of how a wine feels in your mouth. So if you think of the milk scale, skim milk, 1%, 2%, whole milk, half and half cream. I don't know where these newfangled oat milks and almond milks fit in that, but I'm going old school from skim to cream.

Obviously, you know, even if you're driving your car right now, you can think about and imagine the difference of how the weight of skim milk feels in your mouth versus whole versus cream. Okay. Do

you ever hear people refer to the term perfect pairing when it comes to food and wine and find yourself giving a small or maybe large eye roll? Oh. If that's you, you're going to want to listen in this week. I know that so many people are like, yeah, I like food and yeah, I like wine and yeah, I probably like them together, but what is the big deal about this whole pairing thing?

And does it really make a difference? And if so, how do you do it and, and what are the best things to think about when trying to put food and wine together in a way that's just going to bring you the most joy? So I'm going to break down two very simple guiding principles today that have been taught to me over the years when it comes to putting the right food and wine together on the table and in your mouth.

One of them has to do with matching the body of the food and wine. And the other principle talks about finding success in both complementary flavors and also contrasting flavors. So we're going to dig down into those two things today. I'm also going to give you a super fun piece of homework. You will thank me for this.

And lastly, if you haven't already downloaded my free wine tips cheat sheet, you can hop on my website, sipwithnicki. com forward slash resource. And I'll send my PDF right to your inbox that has a lot of super helpful principles for understanding wine and food and wine pairings. So time to talk about the perfect pairings.

Eye roll. Here we go.

So in: 2012

And so I'm so excited to do the first of, I think, what will be many episodes. And I'm really just going to scratch the surface today. Um, but if you enjoy this introduction, I'm going to go deeper and hopefully interview some of the people I'm about to talk about today and give you some great suggestions on things to try at home.

So, during that week long crash course in food and wine pairing at the Culinary Institute, our instructor was David Katz, and David owns a company here in St. Helena called Panavino. If you have ever been wine tasting in Napa or Sonoma, and they put those highly addictive breadsticks on your table during the tasting, they're buttery and salty and crunchy and like you cannot.

Stop eating them. That's David's invention. That's his company. I'm going to put the link in the show notes to Panavino, right? Bread for wine. I'll put the link in the show notes because you can actually order and have them shipped. And I would love for you to try what I'm about to talk about. But anyway, David was my instructor and he also has this company where he makes cured meats and prosciutto and, and all of these wonderful accompaniments that are meant to go with wine.

And one of the most interesting exercises, and here we are 12 years later, and I still remember this, is he brought in little trays of just chicken breast. And we each had a little tray in front of us, and there was probably three or four different little compartments. And each one, the chicken breast was prepared just a little bit differently.

So the first one was like super plain, and then the second one was salted, and then the third one had herbs, and then the fourth one had a sauce. And then we had a lineup of different wines in front of us. And we proceeded to taste each different preparation of chicken and then try different combinations with the wines.

And it was like, Oh, like light bulbs going off, you know, when you actually have the opportunity to try these different combinations in front of you. Right. So a lot of my. Um, philosophies on food and wine pairing. I have to attribute to David. He also came up to the winery where I work about three years ago and did a training for us.

It was fun to reconnect with him, putting it out there that hopefully he will be on the podcast one day. But a lot of what I'm going to talk about. is sort of ingrained from him, combined with a newer sort of guru that I have found, who is Evan Goldstein. And Evan is a master sommelier, like that top level master of wine.

You guys have heard me talk about this before. And he has a book called Perfect Pairings. You can get it on Amazon. I will put Put the link in the show notes and it is a partnership with his mom, Joyce Goldstein, who is a very well known chef. She worked at Chez Panisse here in the Bay Area. And this book is amazing and I actually only stumbled upon this book like in the last year.

I have it here in front of me and you should see like the amount of highlighting and notes and dog eared pages that I have. But what I love about Evan's book is that he breaks down kind of the philosophies and guidelines of how to put the right things together, why they work and why they don't, but then goes sort of chapter by chapter with each type of grape.

So let's talk about Chardonnay. Let's talk about Riesling. Let's talk about sparkling wine and Sangiovese, of course, has a chapter. And then he gives multiple recipe suggestions and the recipes are his mom's. So it's an awesome book. And if you are really interested in diving into this and just playing and learning those different combinations, I would recommend that you grab that book on Amazon as well.

When I first started learning about this concept of finding the combinations that Where the, you know, the food elevates the wine and the wine elevates the food, and therefore it's just a better overall experience like one plus one equals three. The really easy to grasp, and I've always relied on this and taught many people this over the years, is talking about finding similar body or body styles in the food.

and the wine. And that is generally a great guideline. So first, let's talk about what is body in wine. So body is kind of the weight of how a wine feels in your mouth. So if you think of the milk scale, skim milk, 1%, 2%, whole milk, half and half cream. I don't know where these newfangled oat milks and almond milks fit in that, but I'm going old school from skim to cream.

Obviously, you know, even if you're driving your car right now, you can think about and imagine the difference of how the weight of skim milk feels in your mouth versus whole versus cream, okay? So wines will fall on a scale of different bodies, and some wines are very, quote, skim in your mouth. They're thin and lighter body, and generally those are going to be more white.

There are some lighter body reds too, especially like Pinot Noir. And then generally as you go down that body scale going all the way to something like a Cabernet Sauvignon that most people are familiar with, that is going to be a heavier bodied wine, right? It sits in your mouth more like whole milk or even half and half.

So that's what we talk about with body. So in food and wine pairing, we want to find this place where the, the body and the richness of the wine matches the body and the richness of the food. Why? Well, if you have a really heavy, rich bodied wine with a very light, delicate bite of poached fish, that wine literally stomps on that bite of fish.

And while you may love the fishing, you may love whatever wine it is, together, when you're enjoying them in the moment, The fish is gone, right? It's been totally overpowered and vice versa. If you have a very light and delicate, you know, Sancerre, which is Sauvignon Blanc from the Sancerre region, and it's light and crisp and you pair it with a really heavy, creamy, rich, fatty bite of red meat, you may love Sancerre and you may love red meat, but.

But in that moment, the meat has stomped on the Sancerre wine and it's gone. It's almost like, you know, a guiding principle in relationships. We've all been in relationships where that's, whether it's friends or family or romantic, where one person in the relationship completely overpowers the other. Just the other one and the other one maybe gets a little lost in the mix.

And when you find those relationships where the people are equal, right, they bring out the best in each other, they elevate each other. For me, that's very much what finding that right food and wine pairing is. When they match in body and weight and style, you know, everybody wins and you the person who are putting these things in your mouth.

When, because it can be really special if you're into this and if you're, you know, up for stopping and paying attention to what happens. So that's just the first of really two concepts that I wanted to talk about today was just think about the body and the weight, right? In, in different wine and food.

Now I talked about what causes or what difference in body is in wine, right? Again, that milk scale. Without getting too scientific, but if you're like me and you want to know why, like, what drives that? Well, the type of grape is going to affect the body of a wine, the flavor concentration or the extraction, how long that wine was in contact with the grape skins, the percentage of alcohol, right?

A higher alcohol wine is going to feel weightier in the mouth. Generally if that wine spent time in newer oak barrels, which we've talked about in other episodes, that can contribute to a richer body. Tannin, right, which can feel like that chalky, dry astringency, or if it's a sweeter wine that literally still has sugar in it, that is also going to add to the, to the body of the wine.

So those are the things that affect that. Whereas in food The things that contribute to a food item being lighter or richer body are also the flavor concentration, like literally the flavors themselves. Also the fat content that might be in there. Seasonings and spices. Um, the technique in which it was cooked, right?

Something that is Pan fried is going to be a different body than something that is deep fried. That's an obvious one But something that is just grilled versus something that's blackened right with spices That blackened chicken breast with Cajun spice is going to have more quote body, right? Because of that preparation style.

So those are the things that are going to affect the body in the food So that's the first thing I encourage you to think about Think about is just having them meet in the middle so that one doesn't overpower the other, but that they are equals and counterparts and they really elevate each other in the moment.

The other thing that David taught me that always stuck with me is that you can, once you think about body and pay attention to matching that from a flavor standpoint. Two different types of pairing can work. One is complementary flavors. That can be awesome. And then also, and it can be confusing for a minute when you start to think about it, but contrasting flavors in your food and wine can also be awesome, right?

So Let me, let me drill down into that a little bit. So when we talk about complementary flavors, that means that the flavor in the wine and the flavor in food are reminiscent of each other. It's like they're related. And because of that, they find themselves in each other. There's a bridge that's created between them.

And because of that, the fireworks moment happens when you marry them in your mouth, right? Whereas contrasting, when you have, you know, something that's really tart and acidic, and then you match it with something that's rich and fatty, that can be exciting and interesting in your palate, having that contrast, and that can be just as pleasurable.

So this is where you really just have to try different combinations, right? And again, the theme, if you have listened to some of my previous episodes, thank you, by the way, if you've been listening along, you'll hear me always saying, like, these are guiding principles, but in the end, just try and find what you like, because we're all different.

And our palates are different, and what we, you know, think is the ultimate is subjective. However, there are some things that can guide you to find more of those moments and these two concepts of matching body and food and wine, and then also thinking about complementary versus contrasting flavors. Those can also be helpful.

just as great as well. Okay. So here's an example of contrasting. Would you believe that one of my favorite pairings is sparkling wine from California or champagne? From Champagne with fried chicken. Have you tried this before? This is your homework. Like, as soon as you can, I want you to find in your local town, uh, the place that's known the best for fried chicken, and if it's gotta be drive thru, it's gotta be drive thru.

Like, no shade in that game. But I want you to try and open a, uh, sparkling wine and preferably something that says brute on the label, which means dry, not sweet, right? We want a dry, sparkling wine with something like fried chicken. It is a heavenly pairing. Why? Well, because fried chicken is fried, right?

Let's think of the body of that food. It's got fat, it's got fried, it's got oil, it's got spices. My mouth is watering while I'm talking about it. So this is an example of the contrast of sparkling wine being very clean and bright and acidic and they counterbalance each other, right? Sparkling wine in general, like I truly believe that everybody drink, needs to drink more sparkling wine, prosecco and champagne.

We tend to save it for celebrations, but it is a great everyday food and wine pairing because sparkling wine, when you are picking grapes to make quote bubbles, as I call it, you're generally picking those grapes at lower ripeness earlier in the growing season. So it means two things. They have higher acidity in those grapes, which is that the brightness on your palate.

And it generally means those wines have lower alcohol, which also makes them more versatile when it comes to food and wine pairing. So for those reasons, sparkling wine is really a counterbalance to things like saltiness, mild heat or spiciness in food, richness and greasiness, and deep fried foods, right?

Think fried chicken. So there's your I want you to try this combination. And then I want you to Send me an email, Nikki at SipWithNikki. com. Or if we're connected on Instagram or Facebook, please send me a message. And let me know, was this your first time trying that? And what did you think? And did it rock your world?

Because I think it will. If you're anything like me and a lot of people and here believe it in this Mecca where I live of Sonoma and Napa Where we have like more Michelin star restaurants, you know per capita than most cities across the country This is actually a really common thing that people are enjoying a sparkling wine and some of these super indulgent foods like fried chicken Here's an example of something that doesn't work.

Okay, Pinot Noir is a lighter red wine, light body, right? Think maybe one to two percent milk in the mouth. Lighter color, lighter alcohol, very low tannin because Pinot Noir has a thinner skin on the grape, which is driving a lot of those characteristics about it. So imagine you have like a super hearty wintry beer.

beef stew. Now, I love super hearty wintery beef stew and I love pinot noir, but putting them together, you can see how that hearty beef stew might quote stomp or cancel that gentle pinot noir when you're enjoying them sip and bite and sip and bite, right? Whereas keep that beautiful, gentle, light red pinot noir and pair it with a salmon that is maybe a pan seared with like a soy and ginger sauce.

Evan actually has a beautiful recipe in the Perfect Pairing book for this idea. So this actually partially just answered a listener question. Listener questions. So Sarah L. wanted to know, I love drinking red wine, so do I have to pair fish and white wine? That's a great question, Sarah. Thank you for sending that in.

And the answer is, you're probably already gonna guess from the first few minutes that we've spent here together is, no, it doesn't have to be fish and white wine. Because the question is, What is the white wine? Is it a light bodied, crisp Sancerre? Is it a round in the mouth, buttery, baby fat Chardonnay?

Two very different white wines. And what is the fish? Is it a clam? Is it a oyster with mignonette sauce? Or is it a salmon nigiri that I'm so excited to have at our favorite sushi restaurant tonight over a piece of rice and the fat content in that salmon and the way it's been cured, it like melts in your mouth like butter.

You better believe I'm going to put a beautiful red pinot noir with that salmon, right? So it can be done. There's no rules. You know, we are always taught like meat needs red wine and fish needs white. Drill down a little bit farther. What type of wine is it? And how is the food prepared? And what is the sauce?

These things really can make all of the difference. Okay? Seraph. You guys know I love Syrah. Nobody drinks enough Syrah, I think, unless you're like a super Syrah aficionado. But Syrah's known for being kind of meaty and savory in the wine. Well, what do you think is a great pairing with that? Something meaty and savory.

Like, I don't know, Korean short ribs. Another recipe from Evan's book. It's awesome. So hopefully this is starting to make sense, right? It's just always bring it back to those two general concepts about trying to match the body in the food and the wine, and we talked about what drives those things, and then play with differences in complementary flavors, where they're really related to each other, like a buttery chardonnay with a butter ridden piece of fish.

Or think about trying something where they contrast each other and that can be super interesting as well. So now it's time for a Sip Spotlight.

So, in pure transparency, this is going to be a little self indulgent Sip Spotlight, but there is a method to my badness. I have not yet featured my wine, Solovato Sangiovese, in a Sip Spotlight yet. Now, if you listened to episode 13, where I have Dr. Hobie Wedler tasting at my kitchen table, and I sneak my wine in there.

You will hear a very cool and very unbiased description from Hobie about my wine, but today I want to highlight my wine. Too bad, so sad. It's my podcast. I can, right? And I'm proud of this wine, but I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I have to tell you, people have asked Michael and I, now that we're five years into creating this wine label, Solovato, they say, why do you make Sangiovese, right?

You live in Pinot Noir country in Sonoma County, you live over the mountain from Cab country in Napa, why do you make Sangiovese? Well, we drink a lot of it. We always have. And the reason for that, and I'm going to quote this out of Evan Goldstein's book, Perfect Pairings, page 178, Sangiovese is one of the wine world's great gifts to the table.

It's moderate in alcohol. It carries with it a sharp backbone of acidity and by and large has very balanced level of tannin. This basic profile allows it to marry well with many dishes. The pairing of Chianti, right, Sangiovese from the Chianti region in Italy, with tomato based pasta, can we say bolognese, anyone?

Or pizza sauce is a cliche for a good reason. And even without much attention, it is almost always successful because the tomato's acidic nature can stand up. to the acid in the wine. Oh, thank you, Evan Goldstein, for putting in beautiful, eloquent words what I know and I try to convey to people, but I probably have never explained it as beautifully as he just did in the book.

He says Sangiovese's medium body and weight give it tremendous flexibility, right? Because if we're thinking about matching body and food and wine. If we have a wine like Sangiovese that is right in the middle of the spectrum, that's going to give you even more play and even more opportunity to be pairing than if it was a super light bodied wine or a super heavy bodied wine.

Recipes that pair meat or poultry or fruit, especially those with tart flavors like sour cherry and orange and tangerine and tomatoes. Yes, tomato is a fruit. are really good with the California fruit forward interpretation of Sangiovese. So, I make my wine here in California, Sangiovese. The grape is originally from central Italy in the Tuscany region, but we are growing that grape here in Sonoma County.

So it is a, California interpretation of an Italian grape. And because the climate is different here and the soils are different here, I love that he's talking about pairing meat and poultry and then fruit like tart, sour cherry, orange, tangerine. Things like that. Evan actually has a pairing of a paella, like a mixed seafood paella that has mussels and meat in it with Sangiovese and I was like, Ooh, I haven't tried that yet.

We are very classic in that we are always doing our Sangiovese with pizza. and red sauce. But I think, wow, paella, because that's, think about a big skillet of paella. There's a lot going on in there, right? That's pretty rich. It's usually got some spice. You got a lot of different flavors from seafood to protein in there.

So I think that'll be a really fun pairing to try as well. So that's why we chose to make Sangiovese because we knew that it was really food friendly and really versatile as far as pairing, especially if you enjoy. pizza and pasta, but also, you know, charcuterie board, like a charcuterie board can have 19 different flavors on there from types of cheese to types of meats to nuts.

ording, which is mid March of: 2024

com. S O L L E V A T O is Italian for uplifted. And if you listened to the episode called, Who is this Nikki girl anyway? One of the first episodes of this podcast, you will hear a little bit more about the story of why we selected that name and what it means, but it's Italian. And so I'd love for you to try it.

I can ship to most states in the U. S. and if you hop on the website and enter the discount code at checkout, PODLISTENER, P O D L I S T E N E R, PODLISTENER, I'll actually give you a 10 percent off your order just for being a listener. So thank you so much for wanting to try it. Super versatile with food.

Finally! I get a lot of questions, and Michael and I were in a tasting room yesterday in Healdsburg, which is in Sonoma County. And there was a woman there who was Pinot Noir, and she asked for some chocolate. And I was watching this all unfold, and I was like, Oh gosh, she's gonna do it. People love to pair chocolate and wine, and it can be really tricky.

I love chocolate. Don't get me wrong. And y'all know I love wine, right? That's why we're here. But man, putting them together, when we think about our two guiding principles from today, the body and then also just the, the contrasting. If there's sweetness in the chocolate, what it does is it makes the wine seem tart or sour.

It shuts down the perception of the fruitiness of the wine. So can it be done? Yes, but if you're pairing chocolate with wine, you want the chocolate to be dark and bitter is generally going to work better with a dry red wine. And just overall with dessert wine, if you're drinking a wine with any sweetness in it, and there are beautiful dessert wines out there, you want the wine.

to be the sweetest thing in the pairing. Okay? With dessert wines, sweet wines specifically, you want the dessert item to actually be less sweet. The wine should be the sweetest thing, because again, if you are having a semi sweet wine with a really, you know, sweet piece of chocolate torte, lava cake, and you go back to that wine, the wine is gonna seem bitter and harsh and astringent, and nobody wants that, so.

Bye bye. I've really just scratched the surface today, but I think there's going to be more, and we're going to dive deeper and, and from, from my mouth to the pod wave's ears, I'm manifesting that one day we'll be joined by David Katz and Evan, and even Evan and Joyce Goldstein, son and mother combination.

That would be a really fun episode. So, and I hope you found this helpful.

So there it is. Next time you are planning just a nice meal at home for you and your family or if you are entertaining and planning out a menu. Think about matching the body of your food and wine, and think about exploring complementary flavors in your food and wine and their sauces and their preparation, but also don't forget about exploring contrasting flavors because that can be exciting on the palate.

Don't forget your homework!

And finally, we would be so grateful if you would rate and review this podcast in Apple Podcasts. If that's where you're listening, you can scroll to the very bottom where you're looking at the show, Sip with Nikki. So not within a particular episode, but if you just go into your library and click on the show as a whole.

Very bottom, there's a spot to rate, it's like Uber, five stars, or, um, leave a one or two sentence review. Uh, we would be so grateful. It helps us to show up more and find new listeners and, uh, maybe we'll give you a shout out in the show notes for, uh, a review with us. You can also support the podcast, buy me a glass of wine, buy our producer Catherine a bourbon, link in the show notes to do that as well.

And finally, also in the show notes, I'll put the link to Evan Goldstein's Perfect Pairing book on Amazon, David Katz's Panavino to get the best breadsticks on the planet. And of course, Solovato Sangiovese and the special discount code for our listeners. Sure do appreciate you listening. Cannot wait to catch up with you next time around.

Until then, sip well.

Sip with Nikki is hosted by Nikki Lamberti. Production and sound mixing by Katherine Bryan. You can always send your listener questions to Nikki. at sipwithnicki. com, or find us on the Sip with Nicki Facebook page, or visit us on Instagram at Nicki Lamberti. Thanks for listening. Until next time, sip well everyone.

This is Sip with Nicki, a production of Take 10 Studios.

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