Utterly Futile: Wine Pairing

So I open the freesheet that now comes with every train ride, and what do you know but some guy called Amit Sharma (not the cricketer) has written a piece in which he pairs wines with classic rock and jazz albums. Nevermind, by Nirvana, gets a Clare Valley Riesling; Led Zeppelin IV, a Fattoria di Basciano I Pini; Sgt. Pepper, a South African Chardonnay; Kind of Blue a Ribera del Duero (although the Oddbins website actually recommends Bob Marley as the background music for this particular wine, whereas Sharma teams Bob with an Australian Dolcetto/Lagrein mix. Who'd have thought?). 

Given that wine pairing of any sort is such a barren and footling activity, you might just as well go nuts and pair up things that make no sense at all, I mean, classic Grunge and Riesling, Michael Jackson and Beaune, what's the harm? We've certainly mixed our media - PK with his groundbreaking wine in a bath; me, with my equally urgent and relevant TV + wine meditation. Anything, I think it's fair to say, is better than the thickwit banalities of conventional food and wine pairings.

Nor are we alone. Matthew Latkiewicz, on the excellent McSweeney's site, writes about Wine & Playing Pool, noting on the way that 'If you're spending much time on the food pairing, you aren't spending enough time not being a douchebag'; while 'Wine is, you'll excuse the phrase, kind of a pussy drink'; and 'I actually worry that wine has made me sort of dumb.' Mainly, he argues that wine plus the game of pool is a bad pairing, rather than a desirable one. But that's good to know, too.

Greg Gonzalez, in his book Playing With Wine, discusses such wine-pairable activities as yoga, burying a dead goldfish (Riesling, again), dealing with an IRS audit, and painting ('If you are painting a room then opt for a nicely chilled Pinot Grigio. It can refresh you and can also be used to clean the brushes'). Momaha.com similarly goes for a wine and paint match, claiming that 'Here in Omaha there are a few places whose business is to provide you wine and art supplies for an awesome night out.' Such as? Corky Canvas, 'Where you're sure to uncork your creativity!'; or Pinot's Palette ('Corporate events and house parties'); both looking like a ton of fun, both making that leap from mere boozing to out-and-out creative self-actualisation, both in Omaha - the geographical dead centre of the United States and home of the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium.

Best of the bunch? Could just be Wine and Sex: The Ultimate Pairing?, from the Vinography site. 'The best combo I know of,' writes blogger Alder Yarrow, 'is a bottle of something good and some skin-to-skin contact'. Moreover, 'I'm firmly in the wine before sex category, though I've never complained about a well chilled glass of Champagne afterwards'. But beware: 'As with any wine match, I think it's important to get the proportions correct, but this may be more important with wine and sex than with other pairings. Too little and you might as well not have had any. Too much and things can get sloppy.' I love this guy.

And since we've got this far, why stop? Wine & writing is an obvious pairing (I'm thinking William Faulkner, Malcolm Lowry, Dorothy Parker, although just about anyone would do short of Jane Austen, although, actually, she quite liked a glass). Then there's wine & music (Keith Richards, Dean Martin, same as writers); wine & motor racing (Mike Hawthorn); wine & conjuring (Tommy Cooper); wine & American Football (Joe Namath); wine & Association Football (George Best); wine & physics (Sir William Rowan Hamilton); wine & politics (Pitt the Younger, Herbert Asquith, Ted Kennedy); wine & despotism (Caligula); wine & the prosecution of a World War (Winston Churchill). There is in fact nothing that wine cannot accompany, not excluding cheeseburgers, porridge, playing the piano, gefilte fish, surgery and piloting an aircraft, although these last two normally work better in an alcohol-free environment. Wine goes with things. That's all there is to be said on the matter. Now let us never speak of it again.

CJ

We two happy bunnies are having our Easter break – back next week!

CJ & PK

Cheap wine – good, or no good?

When a Master of Wine lowers his sights to consider those of us scuffling amongst the bargains, it behoves us to raise our gaze from the bottom shelves to see what he has to say. And Richard Hemming MW recently turned his well-qualified vision to the wines offered by Aldi and Lidl.

If, as CJ wrote, “mute acquiescence counts as a ringing endorsement”, these are becoming something of a Sediment benchmark for cheap palatable wines. Mr Hemming MW admits that “they are almost without exception the very lowest possible price for their type”. But, it seems, that’s a bad thing.

“Such unrelenting focus on price, however, risks skewing the perspective of the consumer,” writes Mr Hemming MW. “If you can buy perfectly good Sancerre Rosé for less than £10, why pay more?”

Well…exactly. Why indeed?

But Mr Hemming MW suggests that we should. Pay more, that is. He asks whether we are potentially damaging the whole wine industry, by buying good quality wine at a low price.

“That not only puts pressure on independent retailers (who are experiencing falling sales according to this week's Wine Merchant survey), it potentially strips profitability out of the supply chain, all the way down to producers.”

Now, I would not claim to be an expert on the mechanics of the free market, but I think one principle of competition is that if someone can offer something for less, someone ultimately will – and everyone in the supply chain just has to adjust accordingly.

But I can also add to my A-Level in Economics some forty-odd years interim experience of buying stuff. And I think I can safely predict that the customers of independent wine merchants are not going to decamp en masse to Lidl and Aldi.

Take, say, Corney & Barrow. 230 years old, headquartered in the City, two Royal warrants and an ampersand. “Sometimes,” they wrote to me this week, “we have to pinch ourselves given the sheer length and breadth of our Fine Wine Broking List.”

Their customers probably don’t fancy driving to the outskirts and serving themselves, in a glorified shed, surrounded by pallets, busted cardboard boxes, and packets of processed German meats. While someone keys their Mercedes.

Yes, you can order Aldi wines online, and have them delivered. But you don’t see Aldi lorries competing for parking spaces in Knightsbridge with the Berry Bros vans. There may be a certain kudos these days, a kind of austerity chic, in unearthing bargains, and in demonstrating to the world that one is a shrewd shopper.But still, the thought of an Aldi lorry outside one’s pied a terre? Rather like seeing the bailiffs arrive, old chap! Wasn’t this year’s bonus up to scratch, then?

“I can't help thinking,” Mr Hemming MW goes on, “that as the discounters continue to grow, their low price strategy could threaten the diversity of our market.” Really? Because there’s still a diverse range of cheeses and coffees on the market at independent retailers (or, as we call them, chi-chi delis), even though you can get cheap, strangely-named but perfectly palatable cheese, or coffee, on any discount supermarket’s shelf.

And some of us would be quite content with cheap, strangely-named but perfectly palatable wine.

Or is Mr Hemming MW saying that cheap wine shouldn’t be palatable? That the wide range of great wines which an MW enjoys is only possible because paupers like us with untrained palates mop up the low-priced rubbish, which maintains the viability of the quality market?

You could view cheap wine as an entry into the whole world of wine, after which a customer might upgrade to the variety and quality and service of an independent wine merchant. In which case, it’s surely a good thing if that entry level wine is decent, and doesn’t put people off ever opening another bottle.

But it also assumes that the more “diverse” stuff from the independent merchants actually merits its higher price. And it’s up to the industry (including the MWs) to explain that merit to the public.

It’s wonderful that there is a bewilderingly huge variety of wines to explore. But there are also some of us, less affluent and less adventurous perhaps, who would happily settle for a “perfectly good Sancerre Rosé for less than £10”.

Or are we victims of a “skewed perspective”?


PK