Pairing Food with wine

Huon Hooke: 

The dark art of pairing food with wine

Q: People rave on about pairing food with wine, but it's largely pretentious nonsense, isn't it? 

A: Matching food and wine is one of those dark arts, one that seems to have few hard-and-fast rules. We all know what we like when we taste it, but what you like could be anathema to someone else. "One man's meat is another's poison" sums up the problem neatly.

At an event last year for Barossa Valley vineyard St Hugo, I was amazed to hear St Hugo chief winemaker Dan Swincer declare he didn't like cheese with red wine. Most people do, in my experience. The "wine and cheese night" was quite a fixture in my early days of getting into wine. Thankfully, we've come a long way from those evenings of mousetrap and rough red. At the St Hugo dinner, guests were served Murray cod with shallot, wakame seaweed and peas, and a semi-mature 2004 St Hugo Coonawarra cabernet sauvignon.

Some might raise their eyebrows at fish with red wine, but not me. Indeed, I think it works rather well. My theory has long been that it doesn't matter what kind of protein you eat: protein works with red wine generally. Just try a tannic young barolo without food, and see how different it tastes after you've chewed a mouthful of protein. Barolo is made from the nebbiolo grape, which can produce some of the most astringent wines on the planet, but protein softens the tannins so much that the wine is almost unrecognisable.

The protein could just as easily be beef, lamb, chicken or cheese. The fact that this succulent fish was sauced with beurre rouge helped. The fish provided the protein while the sauce provided flavour. Murray cod has plenty of flavour itself, but the red wine and butter sauce boosted the dish as a whole. Superb!

The 2004 St Hugo cabernet is a top vintage; Swincer's favourite, in fact. That it was 13 years old and mellow helped its compatibility with the dish: a young vintage with more assertive tannins might not have worked so well.

The current vintage is 2013. It has a dense blackberry flavour, full body and lots of extract. Its youthful tannins suggest it will go better with red meats (think rare beef steak) or hard cheeses (think reggiano, cheddar, ossau iraty). Sorry, Dan. We'll just have to agree to disagree.

If you have a drinks question for Huon Hooke, please email it to thefullbottle@fairfaxmedia.com.au 

Riesling Down Under

By Max Allen

Riesling Riot

There's a beautiful aroma you find in old, well-cellared bottles of riesling, one that is deliciously distinctive but hard to describe.

If you've ever stuck your nose into a glass of good, 20-year-old Eden Valley riesling, or a mature golden spätlese from the Mosel, you'll know the aroma I'm talking about. It's sweet, like candied citrus peel or mandarin syrup, but savoury, too, like buttered toast. It's a bit earthy, like button mushrooms. And oily and evocative, like faded sandalwood. But … it's not really like any of these things. It smells of itself: lovely old riesling perfume.

The Germans, of course, have a word for this aroma: firne, pronounced "feer-neh". I first heard the term used by energetic and entertaining Mosel winemaker Ernie Loosen at one of the early biennial Frankland Estate International Riesling Tastings in Sydney in the early 2000s. Loosen had poured one of his old spätlese rieslings to match a dish of pheasant and mushrooms, and he used "firne" to describe the deeply aromatic quality of the mature wine and how this extra depth of savoury flavour made it such a good match for the food.

One German dictionary definition I've found for "firne" is "well-seasoned" and I think that's a useful way to think of how wine changes as it ages in the bottle.

"Seasoning" evokes the addition of flavours, and that's what an older riesling, after, say, a decade or two in the cellar, can taste like. It started life as nothing but fermented grape juice, but now tastes as though someone has stuffed spices and other fruits and toast into the bottle. "Seasoning" also evokes the process of something maturing over time, ripening, becoming ready for use – which, again, describes a great old riesling. Yes, it can be highly enjoyable when it's young and fresh and eager to please, but cellaring allows it to reach its peak of complexity, depth and satisfaction.

All aspects of this wonderful grape and more will be explored at Riesling Downunder – the modern iteration of the original Frankland Estate International Riesling Tastings – in Melbourne and Sydney next month.Proceedings kick off at Melbourne's Regent Theatre on Sunday, February 4, with a public tasting called Riesling Riot: $60 buys you access to more than 80 riesling producers from Australia and around the world – including Ernie Loosen and a dozen other great makers from Germany all of whom will be pouring their wines.The Riot will then be repeated at Sydney's Town Hall on Wednesday, February 7th. 

In between there are two days of masterclasses and lunches at Melbourne's Arts Centre covering topics such as the evolving styles of international riesling, and the relevance of this classic grape in today's marketplace. Tickets are $495 for a pass (including lunch) for both days, $330 for one day, $165 for a single session. There will also be a pop-up riesling bar open to the public on the Arts Centre terrace from Friday, February 2, to Tuesday, February 6.

For details and booking information, see rieslingdownunder.com.au

All aspects of riesling will be explored at Riesling Downunder next month.

A trip to Musk

Visitors to Passing Clouds Winery in Musk will soon be able to catch the Daylesford Spa Country Railway to the cellar door. 

Passing Clouds, in partnership with Daylesford Spa Country Railway, will receive $30,000 to expand its tasting room and build a railway platform as a stop for the tourist train.

The funding comes as part of the state government’s Wine Growth Fund, which will also benefit four other wineries in the Daylesford and Macedon Ranges region.

Passing Clouds winery part-owner Cameron Leith said the Wine Growth Fund grant was timely for the industry, as it would help their business overcome challenges through wine tourism. 

“Instigating plans in this area can be difficult in an industry that inherently faces difficulties based around cash flow,” Mr Leith said. 

“We get a couple of hundred of people through every weekend, but it really is at the point now where we are getting so busy we are actually turning people away.

“This (expansion to tasting room) means we should be able to cater for up to 200 people every day.