Top drops: pairing food & wine

WHICH comes first? The usual question involves a chicken and an egg. Here we're talking food and wine. Or should it be the reverse?

wine

WHICH comes first? The usual question involves a chicken and an egg. Here we're talking food and wine. Or should it be the reverse?

Most people opt to do their best work on the dinner party menu, while the wine comes a distant second and usually involves an emergency run to the bottle shop.

What if you turned that notion on its head and had the drinks ready for action and your recipe search revolved around the varieties or styles of wine you had in the fridge or in your hallway racks.

A great idea is to buy a mixed dozen or, even better, six bottles times two, which gives you a spread of whites and reds to cater for any dining scenario.

Two of each means you can serve a larger group without simulating a drought. Or it allows your thirsty guests to go for seconds - because the wine you've poured is so good.

While the experts might suggest opening a cheeky little Fruili from Italy's north-east to go with the pipis steamed in sea parsley broth, any shellfish dish served simply without cream or chilli is going to go delectably beside most regularly available whites such as a riesling, pinot gris, semillon or savvy blanc.

Likewise, a solid three or four red varieties - such as some shiraz, cabernet, merlot or maybe a more exotic sangiovese or tempranillo - will serve just about any meat variation you can dream up in a real person's kitchen.

Admit it, at home you're not in a stadium trying to impress a three-hat hero, and it's not an elimination round either. You're among friends. But here are some guidelines to finesse your choices.

The principle of selecting a wine to suit just the main ingredient in a dish doesn't cope with our modern, multicultural Australian menu.

Let's use chicken as an example. You might say that suits a white wine style with a bit of body and complexity. But chicken ain't chicken. It could be delicately poached breast in herbed chicken stock with sprigs of coriander and shallots. It might be a robust and spicy curry, a butter-roasted chicken or an intensely braised coq au vin in red wine or white.

It's the sauces, the accompanying vegetables, the marinades, garnishes and flavouring herbs and spices that set the parameters for selecting the best kind of wine.

So for a vigorous curried chicken, forget the whites and choose a rich, sweetly fruited shiraz. If you're into chilli heat, a touch of sweetness in a wine will temper the spice.

If you're slow-cooking pink-fleshed chicken cuts in white wine and herbs, then a fuller-flavoured white variety such as chardonnay or a complex aged semillon or riesling can match the deeper layers in the dish. If you're cooking with tomatoes and basil in a cacciatore-style dish, then a young zippy red shiraz again. A sangiovese with a bite of bright fruit is going to sit up well beside Italy's favourite pasta and meat sauces.

Fish is similar. Cook it with more robust partners - and a lighter red can work. Fish with richer, creamier sauces needs a white with similar power and texture - a full-on chardonnay, or aged semillon will be a treat. But simply grilled seafood with a tart lemon squeezed over it demands a white with similar citrus flavour and acid profiles - riesling is a no-brainer.

When it comes to the red meat tray, cooking simply on the grill or roasting in the oven allows you to choose just about any full-bodied red. Add an aromatic edge with garlic and rosemary, then head to younger and fruitier cabernet, merlot or shiraz, which can deal with turbo-charged flavours. Gamier meats such as duck, quail and rabbit seem to prefer pinot noir or grenache.

And then there's dessert. Here the rule is a sweet wine needs to be as sweet as the food, otherwise it will appear thin and bitey. Fruits, tarts, pies and cakes will all work with a rich, golden sticky wine.

Chocolate needs even more of a thump, so go for a fortified such as a tawny. Or for a really surprising finish, open a rich malty stout and pour a small glass with dark choc treats.

Mmm. Better buy a six-pack as well as that mixed dozen wine. And now you have all the bases covered.

- Other contributors Fiona Donnelly, Zoe Skewes, Simon Wilkinson

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JUSTINE SEEKS RIGHT MATCH

WITH a Paris-born mother and wine at the table at every meal, 2009 MasterChef finalist Justine Schofield always was going to be exposed to food and wine matching.

"I always appreciate a glass of wine with my mum," she says. "She has to have a glass with her dinner, always."

With her afternoon TV show on Channel 10 and other media appearances, Justine juggles requests for her catering company which may include everything from a simple baby shower to an eight-course degustation menu with caviar, foi gras and venison.

Wine plays a big part of that. "I work together to make the best possible match," she says. "I think it's an extremely important part of making the dish sing.

"I'm still learning about wine, learning to work out what goes with what and getting it to work in harmony. It's amazing how much you can bring out certain elements of the dish."

While French champagne has been a favourite, as is a crisp white with seafood, this past winter she has been moving towards reds. "Red meats I am appreciating more and more, the different levels of red wines out there that go with the different red meats. A really nice full-bodied red with a fillet of beef with a bordelaise sauce. Mmmm. You can't go wrong. That's a real appreciation of red meat with red wine."

- Grant Jones

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[How the experts find a perfect match]

SOUTH-EAST ASIAN

Grant Dickson and Tui Do, FermentAsian, Tanunda, SA

THERE'S good news for people who love the fresh, lively aromatics and sweet-sour-salt balance of South-East Asian cooking.

The best wine matches for this food are often the most affordable options, according to Grant Dickson who designed the superb wine list for FermentAsian, the hot new Barossa restaurant where the Vietnamese cooking of his wife Tuoi Do has won rave reviews.

"With South-East Asian food it's often the entry level wines that work better than the more upmarket ones," says Grant, who also works for Rockford wines. "Very often the more expensive, lofty expressions don't match because they are more worked, they've got more oak characters. The entry level wines with their natural, grapey flavours do."

For red wines, Grant recommends grenache dominant blends where the flavours are still "electric, alive and tight".

For cold rolls, prawn or squid dishes, Grant says you can't go beyond a riesling, fresh or old, particularly Eden Valley.

"Eden Valley riesling works really well because of the lime juice character. Because lime juice and fish sauce are two of the building blocks of so many dressings, riesling mirrors those flavours beautifully."

Tony Love says: Chilli hits are best taken with faintly sweet wines like the new fashion off-dry rieslings, and grenache cannot be beaten when it comes to salty, sticky, spiced meats.

SPANISH

Frank Camorra, Movida, Melbourne

IF YOU'RE using chorizo to add a Spanish flair to your cooking, Frank of Melbourne's three MoVida restaurants suggests thinking outside the square when considering a wine pairing. Rather than restricting your choices to just red or white wine, he says to think as the Spanish would and match your chorizo dish with sherry.

"Sherry can be a bit hit and miss in that not everyone likes it," Frank admits. "But if I was serving Spanish food, I'd be very confident in serving it with sherry. In fact, if I was using chorizo as an ingredient, I'd start the meal with chorizo cooked in sherry and then served with a glass of sherry."

Frank recipe for chorizo cooked in sherry is says to thickly slice the chorizo and fry with a little olive oil, garlic and parsley. Add a splash of dry sherry to the pan and let it sizzle and cook into the chorizo before serving in a terracotta dish.

"It's a classic Spanish tapa," Frank says. "In northern Spain, the same dish would be done with apple cider."

Spanish sparkling wine, known as cava, would be another suitable wine match for chorizo, Frank says. "Chorizo is quite strong flavoured and quite salty, so it would pair perfectly with the lightness of the cava."

Cava is readily available in Australia and he recommends Freixenet cava for a midweek meal or Raventos if it's a special occasion.

Tony Love says:

Cava is a terrific way to kick off a small plates selection. light, not too complex and sits alongside many salty, smoked meaty kind of flavours. Likewise a dryish sherry style is a sip-along wine, though if you don't fancy the dryness, opt for a friendly neutral white like alborino, savagnin, fiano or vermentino.

ITALIAN

Tony Percuoco, Tartufo, Brisbane

"ONE of my passions is pasta al pomodoro pasta with a simple sauce of tomatoes, garlic and a little fresh basil," says Tony, who hails from Naples.

"If I had to match it with one glass it would be a straight sangiovese from a single vineyard in Chianti. Some sangioveses are blended with a little cabernet but you can't go wrong with a sangiovese from the Chianti region."

Tony suggests sampling one of the chiantis lc correct here produced by noted Tuscan vineyard, Isole e Olena or an Antinori Peppoli Chianti classico. Or if you're looking for a sangiovese from closer to home, try a Jinks Creek Sangiovese from Kings Valley in Victoria.

"If you don't like Sangiovese, try a cool climate pinot noir instead," Tony says. "Some have a ruby colour and a Burgundy style - you want one with no tannins. Think of the acidity. It should complement rather than cut through it (the tomato)."

Prefer white wine? Tony suggests matching your next pomodoro to a Lachryma Christi, a celebrated Neapolitan wine.

"To suit the dish, the wine needs to be heavy on minerality to cope with the seed in the tomato," he says.

"Chardonnay develops in wood and has vanilla and peach notes which won't fit."

An Australian white match could be something such as a pinot gris from Tasmania, perhaps from Josef Chromy," Tony says. "It's got to be driven by minerality rather than by barrel or fruit."

Tony Love says: Tomato-based sauces retain acidity from the fruit so wines can be dulled beside them. Neutral whites are perfect complements. Many Australian sangioveses also aren't about obvious ripe fruit more about savoury support to a rich pomodoro sauce.