Veggie vino

The best wine you'll never meat

by Thor Iverson

UNCORKED

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Wine and food go together. That's why you'll often find this column recommending ways to pair the two. But read through those recommendations and you easily could conclude that wine always goes best with flesh -- wine and food pairings, here and elsewhere, are generally keyed to the beast, bird, or fish involved.

This, of course, is unnecessarily narrow thinking. Wine goes just great with most vegetables, something carnivores like me tend to forget. And the fact that most "classic" wine/food pairings are based on the meat at the center of a particular dish can even be an advantage for those seeking the perfect wine-and-vegetable matches; when the meat is removed from the equation, there are few preconceptions to get in the way of creative vinous thinking.

When many of us think about vegetables, the first things that come to mind are greens: leaves, asparagus, broccoli, cucumbers, etc. And when we think of green tastes in food, we naturally gravitate to the "greenest"-tasting wine there is: sauvignon blanc, especially from New Zealand. The over-the-top grass, herb, asparagus, and chili-pepper flavors of many Kiwi sauvignon blancs are the perfect match for green vegetables.

Don't let green dominate your thinking, however. As with all wine-and-food couplings, the key to a pleasant match is identifying the primary flavor in a dish. But whether that dish is flesh or flageolet, people too often limit their focus to the main ingredient, forgetting that an herb, a spice, a sauce, or a cooking technique might actually dominate the flavor. Acidic sauces (such as those made from tomatoes) need acidic wines, but creamy sauces can complement a greater range of wines. Strong herbs do well with strongly herbal wines (Rhônes -- both reds and whites -- are a classic match for strong herbs). Low-level spicy food likes spicy wines (such as reds from Spain's Ribera del Duero, or zinfandel); as the heat gets turned up, look for wines with a little residual sugar (spätlese- or auslese-level German wines, California chardonnay, simple Vouvray). And grilled vegetables have a smoky flavor that goes well with Tuscan reds (such as Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, or Vino Nobile di Montepulciano) or American pinot noir.

Acidity is a good thing to keep in mind no matter how a dish is prepared. Acidic veggies such as onions, leeks, scallions, peppers, and tomatoes will make a low-acid wine (like Australian shiraz) taste like sludge. The only exception would be mild peppers, which have a peculiar flavor affinity with California cabernet sauvignon. Otherwise, stick to high-acid whites including Sancerre, Alsace pinot blanc, Verdicchio or Vernaccia from Italy, and high-acid reds such as barbera d'Asti or barbera d'Alba, Saumur-Champigny, or garnacha-based wines from the Navarra region of Spain.

For earthy tastes -- just about all the root vegetables have them, as do mushrooms -- earthy wines are the obvious choice. Burgundy (red or white), Rioja, or Portuguese reds from the Dão and Bairrada regions are delicious in such situations, but just about any wine with some weight and depth to it will be an interesting match. However, strongly flavored root vegetables like beets need strongly flavored wines to do battle with them; here's where the reds of Priorat, Barolo and Barbaresco, and Australia (especially shiraz) do very well.

With all vegetables, it helps to consider both ingredients and preparation along a sort of spectrum. At one end, you have simple, raw greens. At the other are complex, explosively flavored dishes such as potato gratin or spinach lasagna. Wines fit perfectly along that spectrum from light, acidic whites (with the greens) to deep, complex reds (with the cheese-and-cream-infused slow-baked potatoes). And a middle-of-the-road dish, like roasted red peppers in olive oil, might be best with a medium-bodied wine, like a dry rosé from Bourgueil or southern France.

For non-vegans, dairy products also play a large role in wine pairings. The conventional wisdom is that cheese requires red wine, but I think this is nonsense. Only a very specific kind of cheese -- hard, biting, salty, like Parmigiano Reggiano or manchego -- really demands red wine (Valpolicella, Amarone, and aglianico from southern Italy are outstanding). Otherwise, it all depends on the preparation. For uncooked cheeses of any other type except blue, whites are a much better match. Cooked cheese, on the other hand, is often best with heavy whites (sémillon, chardonnay, white Burgundy) or lighter reds. Blue cheeses require either very assertive reds (zinfandel, shiraz, Châteauneuf-du-Pape) or sweet wines (which could be anything from sparkling red Lambrusco to decadently sweet dessert wines like Coteaux-du-Layon or Alsatian vendange tardive gewurztraminer to fortified wines like Port or Pedro Ximénez sherry).

Finally, two warnings. Asparagus, as nice as it tastes with sauvignon blanc from New Zealand, Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, Menetou-Salon, Quincy, Reuilly, and elsewhere, can mess with just about any other wine unless it's cooked or otherwise subdued by accompaniments. And one vegetable is sometimes impossible to match with wine: the artichoke. There's supposedly some chemical in artichokes that just doesn't get along with fermented grapes. Again, this can be minimized by cooking or strong accompaniments. But try to avoid serving "great" wines of any color with artichokes, because the result will most certainly be disappointing.

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For anyone who's just getting into wine, or is interested in experiencing some of the things this column only talks about, I'm teaching an "Introduction to Wine Tasting" course at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education early next year. There are three sections; I'm teaching the one on Tuesday nights. Visit http://www.ccae.org or call (617) 547-6789 for more details.

Thor Iverson can be reached at wine[a]phx.com.

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