So, first, here's your stress-reliever: There is no "best" match. Yes, some matches may work better for some people. And there are certainly some sure-fire losers, such as serving a dessert wine that is less sweet than the dessert itself -- sour city! -- or matching an extremely tannic wine like a young California cabernet sauvignon with a delicate dish lacking the fat or richness to tame the tannin. However, taste is highly subjective and variable and the notion of absolutes needs to be abandoned.
Even if you manage to hit on a winner of a combination, the odds of you finding it as pleasing the next day, let alone the next month or year, is unlikely. (Though it's also possible you might like it more in the future.) So many factors impact taste and smell: what you ate earlier; smells you encountered (perfumes are particularly crippling); whether you are congested; what your food was stored or cooked near; how a bottle of wine was stored; whether the wine has any subtle faults; etc.
The number of complex, poorly understood circumstances that align to create a taste experience is truly dizzying. So relax. Pick something that seems logical and enjoy both the wine and the food for what they are.
If you're desperately anxious, or don't know where to begin, try a classic combination. My personal favorite is roast chicken and Beaujolais. Whether your chicken is an industrial bird or from a small, local, quality-conscious producer such as Greenwood Farms, if you can roast your de-feathered friend (yes, you can pick up a pre-rotisseried one if you must) to somewhere north of Salmonella City and south of homemade briquette, a bottle of Beaujolais is your friend.
While roast chicken is one of the more wine-friendly main courses out there, a good bottle of Beaujolais enjoys a special relationship with it. All red Beaujolais is made from the gamay noir à jus blanc grape, which produces wines that are low in tannin and relatively high in acidity. They pack a ripe, juicy fruit that just begs to be drunk in quantity. Two importers, Kermit Lynch Wines and Louis Dressner Selections, bring in producers who are committed to quality and whose Beaujolais selections are as close to a sure thing as there is in the wine world.
Earlier this week I paired the following wine with a simply roasted bird from Greenwood Farms, some roasted fingerling potatoes from Yellow Wood Farms (both obtained through Fair Shares) and a fresh green salad:
2006 Desvignes Morgon Côte du Py ($24, Bon Vivant Wines): Deep, almost opaque purple. Slightly restrained nose of ripe, dark cherries and earth. The juicy acidity brightens the fruit, but there is plenty of structure here to support additional aging. The tannins are well-rounded by the fat of the chicken, making this more pleasurable with food than on its own at this stage of its development. This wine deserves a couple of more years in the cellar to fully blossom.
Morgon is one of 10 villages that qualify as "cru" Beaujolais. Essentially, these are areas that should yield higher quality wines, and the wines can be labeled with the name of the cru, instead of simply as "Beaujolais" or "Beaujolais-Villages." Morgon is one of the most age-worthy of the crus, and Desvignes makes wines that age beautifully. In many vintages they are more restrained and structured and do not offer the simple pleasure of most Beaujolais, but some time in the cellar reveals complexity that few other Beaujolais can match.
Dave Nelson is the author of the blog Beer, Wine and Whisky. He writes about wine for Gut Check every Tuesday.
