Simplify pairing wine with food by attending less to the texture, flavor or weight of each and more to whatap in each: elements such as salt, sweet, acid, fat or alcohol. Those elements pair well together — or don’t. For instance, foods high in salt, such as this tapenade, really appreciate wine that is high in acidity. Look how a squeeze of lemon juice on an oyster helps mollify the salinity. Salty food? High acid wine. Moreover, note that a recipe often sets the dominant elements. If chicken breasts are seasoned with capers and olives, the dominant factor becomes salt. Salty food is all around: olives, bacon and other cured meats, soy sauce, grating cheese, most processed foods — and salt itself, in which we are clearly enamored.
HERE’S THE FOOD …
Tapenade
From The Art of Eating Cookbook by Edward Behr (University of California Press); makes about 1 1/2 cups
In a mortar, add 1 teaspoon salt and 2 peeled cloves of garlic; pound them smooth. Add 1 and 1/2 cups pitted black olives, preferably from Provence; 2/3 cups rinsed, drained, pickled capers; and 12 salted anchovies, cleaned of their salt, stripped from their bones, and rinsed. Grind in some black pepper and incorporate 1/2 cup excellent olive oil, a spoonful at a time, mixing all the while. (Or, in a food processor, combine everything but the oil and reduce it to a paste, pausing several times to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Pour the oil in slowly, pulsing and scraping down as needed to ensure the paste is smooth.) Tapenade keeps well in a glass jar in the refrigerator for 2 weeks or more.
… AND DRINK IT WITH THIS
2015 Palladino Gavi Piedmont Italy: Suck on a wedge of lemon with this light, super refreshing white made of the cortese grape; its acidity is zesty and cleansing, muted slightly by mineral undertones. $22
2014 DomaneCQ Wachau Gruner Veltliner Austria: This grape’s great donation to the food pantry is a soft texture framed by crisp acidity; typically melon-lemon, with the characteristic ground pepper finish. $16
2014 La Vieille Ferme Blanc Cotes de Luberon France: From the Perrin family, one of the stellar producers in the southern Rhone; available in various sizes, but the 3-liter box is one heck of a deal (4 bottles’ worth at $22 a box); a mix of white grapes, nearly half roussanne and its zesty, refreshing acidity; juicy, smooth, aromatic, delicious. $22 3-liter box
Contact Bill St John at bsjpost@gmail.com.
