Wine used to be our last choice to drink up with the boys on a Friday night. It gave us too big a hang-over. Food was, for those boys, a good excuse to get together, which, in a way, turned me on to cooking, although that was to come many years later. But this is not another after-school special about a kid becoming a man when he finds his place in a kitchen. This story is about an adult man who still disliked wine, and how he learned to love it, and what all that has to do with food.
I guess it started sometime in 2001. That’s when I began by formal studies in culinary arts. I was not terribly young, but I was very arrogant. Why wouldn’t I be? I was older than most of the other students (in fact I was only a few years younger than some of the instructors), and I had had the luck to share a demanding palate, along with the rest of my family. I also already had a career in Marketing, and had worked in “the real world”. The classes and working in a professional kitchen, however, were humbling. I learned a new respect for fresh produce and sweets. Before, I hesitated to eat dessert, and rarely ordered it at a restaurant. I also learned to value wines.
It wasn’t that I tasted a particularly good bottle, as at that point I wouldn’t have known the difference. The fact is that only then I saw how some wines can enhance the food you’re eating.
Further knowledge was passed on to me during my classes at the
CIA. But that was a few years later. Up to that point I had been exercising my tasting skills by consuming as much of that fermented grape juice as I could. Still, my choices remained distant from quality; I was more concerned about the shallowness of my pockets.
Nowadays, I love wine. I have, now, tasted some really good bottles from some very prestigious wineries around the globe. But what I love about wine is not how much I know about the specifics. I couldn’t tell you the characteristic terroir of a burgundy, or how is a Sonoma Valley Cabernet Sauvignon different from one from the Maipo Valley. I love wine because of what I understand about it.
Let me start with the facts; the hard, cold numbers, indeed. Wine is good for the restaurant business. Nothing brings in more revenue than the markup for wine does. As long as I keep selling wine, my restaurant has a chance to remain in business. People have almost accepted wine to be expensive. As a restaurant, I also pay pretty penny for my bottles. Then, there’s the –sometimes-, ridiculous markup, which nobody argues with (I mean, I don’t get it. People don’t are reasonably uneasy about paying a lot for a tomato salad, but they have no argument against a hundred dollar bottle of alcoholic grape juice). I learned in Economics 101 about the rules of supply and demand, and as long as I have costumers willing to pay me US$ 15000 for my ’98 Petrus, I will continue to charge that.
But other than the economic factors, I also like wines for what they do with food. You can find a perfect match between a wine you’ve tasted and a dish you’re preparing. It’s a delicate play involving the acidity, astringency, bitterness, fruitiness, residual sugar and alcohol content on a wine, and the flavor combinations, temperature, fat content, texture and spiciness of the food. When you hit the right match, you get a wonderful sensation in your mouth that I can only describe as a rollercoaster.
First you have the food in your mouth, and then you drink the wine. The flavor of the food is overpowered by the aromas in the drink, but only momentarily. Soon, the food comes back, only stronger. When you have the perfect marriage, specific characteristics of the food will be enhanced, while some not so desirable will diminish (For instance, gaminess of some meats will become more obvious with the right Pinot Noir, while the fatty sauce will not feel so heavy with a wine that has nice acidity)
Experimenting with foods and wines is just another plus in my chosen career. Some combinations don’t work, but sometimes you find real culinary alchemy. I’m sick of those tannic wines, with overpowering wood, only good by themselves (or maybe with a cigar, although I prefer to smoke them in the company of scotch). Bring me softer, more subtle wines that are food friendly. Bring me wines made with food in mind. Real wines that will not kill the food I’m preparing. Bring me some of those wines and I will show you that alchemy is, indeed, real.
By CGS
