What to Eat With What to Drink: The Delightful World of Pairings

It’s difficult for me to pick a single favorite food and wine pairing. I’m pretty easy to please when it comes to eating and drinking, and when food and wine are put together there’s not much I enjoy more. One of my favorite aspects about pairings is that they allow us to manipulate our palate, and that when food and wine are consumed together they can exponentially expand our sensory experience. There’s so many different ways to pair food and wine—sweet and savory, acidic and salty—the different ways that we can work with weight, richness, fruitiness, etc. is astounding. I often love to pair with contrasting aspects in mind; it’s fun for me to try and find unusual food and wine combinations that work well together. I like the unexpected. There’s joy in surprising your taste buds. However, pairings with an eye toward comparison, or common characteristics, are always a welcome treat.

Perhaps my favorite simple, yet exceptional food and wine pairing while working at Beauregard Vineyards was when my coworker Lonny brought a treat for after work not long after the release the 2010 Beauregard Ranch Zinfandel. After we closed down the bar, Lonny poured us each a small glass of the Zin, and brought out a plate he’d hidden in the fridge. On the plate was a wedge of Humboldt Fog, one of my favorite cheeses. A soft-ripened goat cheese, Humboldt Fog has a creamy inner encased by a runny shell, a layer of ash that runs through it, and a rind made of bloomy mold and ash. The pairing of the rich and herbal goat cheese with the cool-climate, earthy Zinfandel was breathtaking. In one bite it was as if I were sitting on the edge of a meadow, surrounded by dry brush and brambles, picnicking in another place and time. The best pairings have this ability I think, to capture our senses and to pull us out of the present. By choosing what to eat with what to drink we take gastronomy into our own hands, and by doing so we become the curators of an experience that extends beyond the boundaries we are normally confined to each day into the realm of Dionysian pleasure.

(Lonny: the Man, the Myth, the Legend)