I’ve often tried to impress friends or dates by matching the right wine with the right food. Wine brings out the flavor in food, right? After all, I need all the help I can get.
I once turned a date into a vegetarian with one bite of my Swiss steak. One Thanksgiving in Rome, my Italian friends wondered why my turkey looked curiously like a Vietnamese pot-bellied pig. I gave my cat, Sport, some table scraps and she immediately called Sushi Den.
As I grew older, then lived in Rome, I learned food and wine go together like ham and cheese. Just follow one simple rule: white food with white wine; red food with red wine. I learned the hard way, however, that chardonnay doesn’t go well with chicken wings.
Saving me in Denver is a mod, backlit wine store on South Broadway called Divino. I go in and tell one of the young, hip kids working there what I plan to cook and I have a bottle of wine in my hand and an explanation within five minutes. And they nail it every time.
So on a trip to San Francisco two weeks ago, I rented a car and went to the heart of the wine capital of North America. Sonoma and Napa County beyond the East Bay echo vineyards in Chianti and Montepulciano in Tuscany.
Sonoma is Napa’s little sister, oft-overlooked on wine tours but a great escape from crowds that make Napa tasting rooms look like concession stands at Fenway Park.
Up Sonoma Highway, about 11 miles south of Santa Rosa, I found the Mayo Family Winery. Inside a simple two-story brown house ringed by grape vines is one of the great places in the country to learn about food pairings.
Greeting me was general manager Maxwell Porter-Elliott. Porter-Elliott isn’t your typical tasting room clerk. Dressed in a white tunic with long black hair and a beard, the 26-year-old looks like he just walked out of a three-star kitchen in Paris.
That’s close. The executive chef from Temple, N.H., is a graduate of New York’s prestigious Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and a former intern at Le Bernardin, Zagat’s No. 1 New York restaurant, but bolted for low-key Sonoma.
Here he found a need. Napa and Sonoma counties have 650 wineries but many consider a food pairing a glass of pinot gris with a really good Ritz cracker.
Mayo is a tiny winery, selling only 5,000 cases a year (big wineries sell up to 10 million). It doesn’t sell in stores. The bottles don’t even have bar codes. But it does a lunch you can’t find in the hoitiest of toity San Francisco restaurants.
Calling a food pairing at Mayo lunch is like calling Beyonce a girl. For $35, Porter- Elliott perfectly paired seven half-glasses of wine with seven small, exotic, gourmet dishes. A couple of names were longer than some Post picture captions.
Laid back and bright without an ounce of pretentiousness, Porter-Elliott explains why each food goes with each wine. He also answered the question I’ve always had: What is the key to pairing food with wine?
“Balance,” he said. “Alcohol, acid and tannins are the three main dimensions of wine along with one intangible: power. The power must be on the same level. You don’t put a petit syrah with poached white fish.”
Instead of weaving explanations of each course, let me just list the spring menu with the accompanying wine.
Smoked salmon rillette with Bellwether Farms crème fraiche. Wine: 2007 chardonnay. It’s half-smoked salmon mixed with half lightly-cooked salmon tossed with a crème fraiche, chives and 50-year-old sherry vinegar. Dryness of the chardonnay doesn’t diminish creamy salmon flavor.
German butterball vichyssoise. Wine: 2007 Viognier. Vichyssoise (pronounced vishee-SWAH) is a German potato soup with spring onion, garlic and a splash of brown butter. The high acid of the Viognier balances the richness of the soup.
Micro roquette lamb hand roll. Wine: 2007 pinot noir. Lamb in Cajun seasonings wrapped in short sushi rice and wrapped in seaweed. The coastal influences in the pinot blend nicely with the seawood and Cajun seasonings.
Couscous salad with Caggiano duck breast sausage. Wine: 2007 Malbec. Israeli (pearl) couscous made from semolina cooked in pho broth mixed with sausage and red bell pepper. Malbec is simple; the dish is not.
Tuna tartare with forest nameko and balsamic chocolate. Wine: 2006 cabernet sauvignon. Raw tuna in Japanese citrus dressing of ponzu, cumin, blackberry ginger, dark chocolate and balsamic vinegar. With forest mushrooms on baked pasta. Boldness of the cumin, vinegar and chocolate stand up to the bold cabernet.
Candy roll pasta with hijiki blue cheese and beets. Wine: 2006 petite sirah. Tootsie-roll-shaped pasta filled with Korean seaweed, dried tart cherries and beets. Powerful petite sirah needs a big-flavor dish.
Coconut lychee panna cotta with spiced churro. 2008 Gewurtztraminer. A refreshing, cold dessert wine offsets the spiciness of the deep-fried churro.
I noticed one thing. The wine not only brought out the flavor in the food, but the food also brought out the flavor in the wine.
“Wine is like a real diverse spice,” Porter-Elliott said. “There are so many different flavors, so many different blends. It’s an endless matching game. That’s why I like wine so much.”
I don’t remember ever learning more about food and wine in 90 minutes. Hmm. I wonder if that vegetarian girl is still around.
John Henderson: 303-954-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com
If you go
Mayo Family Winery, 9200 Sonoma Highway, Kenwood, Calif., 707-833-5504, mayofamily , mayofamilychefs@gmail.com
