Does great wine go with food?

It is January and being bored, I organized a few tastings for my wine club members called the Rootstock Club. The first Saturday tasting featured a comparison of wines form the two main soil types in the Northern Willamette Valley. After a blind tasting we sat down to lunch. Two of my club members were sitting next to me and uttered the unthinkable, "we really don't like wine that much with dinner, we like it better afterwards."

It made me think about something Hatch, the winemaker at Fromm told me when we were in New Zealand. He said we are all trying to make great wines, but most days I just need a good wine with dinner. Sometimes I think that most great wines are destroyed by food. It's the perfect food and wine match that brings out the best in each other. But who has time to sit around and come up with the perfect food and wine match? In reality, it is the simplest of foods that works with great wine. We should probably have simpler wines with more complex meals or keep food simple when we are having a great wine.

The problem is none of us eats simply when we are out. I went to a very well know Portland eatery recently,  a place with well known chefs and a restaurant that has sadly lost it's mojo. Well, maybe food for thought for another blog on the life cycle of restaurants. But while the mojo was missing, the food was still good and the wine was great(if I say so myself), the 2006 Lenné Estate Pinot Noir. The wine is finally out of bottle shock and has opened like a rose, with amazing mid palate and finish. You will have to excuse my immodesty on this wine, but it really sinks into the mid-palate with an almost savory quality.

I suppose I look for length above all else in categorizing a wine as great. Not that wine can be reduced to one element, but I know that without length, I can't think of a wine as great. That length is almost always diminished by food. Perhaps I should re-think my definition of great wine, but I will stick to the idea that great wines can't be put down, they hold your interest after the meal is over. On the night in question, the wine was obliterated by a first coarse which included a garlic laden salad and a spicy curry soup with ginger. It was a good exercise in how to make a great wine taste bad. In a perfect world, I would have ordered an Alsatian wine or Oregon PInot Gris for the first coarse but, too many wines and such a small liver.

In any case, the wine went better with my duck and horrible with my wife's scallops. And yet, another problem with food and wine pairing, a wife who doesn't eat meat. I can tell you that by the end of the meal, the wine started to taste recognizable but it made me think about the kinds of wine we make and what their place is with food.

Matt Kramer had a good article recently about food and wine. I loved the line: One thing is certain: Food gives wine meaning. I know what he means and yet really have no clue. We spend a lot of money meticulously managing our vineyard to produce wines of depth, very perceptible on the mid palate and finish.  While wines always help clean food off your palate and these wines add to the overall meal, I almost always find them diminished by food. Sacrilegious! Probably, but thats why I keep that inexpensive bottle around, a little more restrained, higher in acid and perfectly good with dinner.