We talk a lot about food and wine matching. [Aside: I tend not\nto be too precise about this: I choose a really nice wine that is quite food\nfriendly when dining out, because it\u2019s rarely a one wine\/one dish combo.] But\nshouldn\u2019t we be talking more about matching wine and people?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think carefully about choosing a wine based on who I\u2019m\ndrinking it with or serving it to. I have a reasonably open and broad palate\nwhen it comes to wine, but I know that some of the wines I like really won\u2019t be\nenjoyed by some people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back when I was with Fiona, we had a wide circle of friends,\nand none were wine professionals. Some had a passing interest in wine. A few\nmore were quite interested in craft beer. So when we hosted dinner parties, the\nlast thing I wanted to do was inflict geeky wines on them, or even wines that\nwould have required them to start noticing the wine, rather than keeping with\nthe social flow of the evening. I knew just the right sort of wines to choose\nfor these evenings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, I have quite a few friends who really love wine, and\nare quite authentic\/natural in their wine tastes. I wouldn\u2019t dream of taking a\ntechno wine, or an international-styled red to dinner with these folks. Quite a\nfew highly rated critic wines would be left undrunk. If I took a Napa Cabernet\n(unless it was something like Corison), I\u2019d miss the mark. Or a polished modern\nBordeaux, or a Penfolds bin series red, or a Parker-starred Ch\u00e2teauneuf. It\nwould be the wrong wine for the wrong crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I had a recent illustration of this principle in a\nrestaurant in Lyon. I was with some wine scientists, and we ordered a bottle of\nRichard Rottiers Beaujolais (one of the crus, I forget which one). I really liked\nit. The rest of the table rejected it, because it had some Brettanomyces. But\nthe wine worked. They hated it and sent it back! It was the wrong wine for this\ngroup. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know now that when I am with techno winemakers there\ncannot be a hint of a fault. So I don\u2019t choose wines on the edge, or with some\nfunk. I play safe. With other friends, playing safe will result in a bottle\nthat never gets finished.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s a strong cultural element to wine. This is\nindependent of notions of quality (this is a discussion in its own right). Part\nof the skill of knowing wine, is being able to find the right wine for a\nparticular person, independent of the drinking occasion or the food choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We talk a lot about food and wine matching. [Aside: I tend not to be too precise about this: I choose a really nice wine that is quite food friendly…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24489"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24490,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24489\/revisions\/24490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}