Daring Pairings: A Master Sommelier Matches Distinctive Wines with Recipes from His Favorite Chefs
For resolute gourmets and connoisseurs, matching wine with food constitutes a chief preoccupation. Perception of a wine’s bouquet and its acidity and alcohol levels can profoundly affect one’s overall impression of food, and a dish’s spiciness, saltiness, and richness have a correlative effect. Bringing to bear a wealth of knowledge and experience, master sommelier Goldstein offers some novel approaches. His concern is not what foods go with ubiquitous varietals on the order of cabernet and zinfandel. Goldstein’s wines to be paired run to obscure grapes such as txacoli, assyrtiko, and mencia. Each wine comes with a wealth of information about nomenclature, geographic origin, and production. He inventories not only the sorts of foods that match well with specific wines but also those whose flavors clash with or obscure the wine’s best characteristics. He notes also useful cheese pairings. Renowned chefs have contributed recipes that especially complement each wine. --Mark Knoblauch