I couldn’t agree more with the author. I want red - of my choosing - whether I’m eating fish, pasta or steak. I’ve done wine pairings before and they have always underwhelmed.
A FEW WEEKS AGO my neighbor John stopped me as I was walking past his house. He was planning to take his wife out for a birthday dinner and needed some advice. “I’m looking for a restaurant with a great wine-pairing program,” he said. I told John that I wasn’t the best person to ask since I’m not a big fan of wine-pairing menus or the multicourse tasting menus they usually accompany. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid them.
But I wanted to be a good neighbor, so I did a bit of research and turned up a few New York restaurants with good wine lists and pairing menus that didn’t cost overmuch. I gave John the names and asked him to tell me which one he chose.
While I waited to hear his report, I considered my last wine-pairing experience almost four years ago, a pretty pricey failure. During a $700 dinner for two at a famous four-star restaurant that will remain nameless, my friend and I were treated to innumerable bites of tiny, fussed-over food and small pours of mediocre wines. Given that the sommelier made a speech before each new glass and dish arrived, we didn’t have much time to ourselves. When the meal was over, we went out for beers and burgers.
But it’s not the high price of pairing menus, the frequently uninspired wine choices, the tiny pours, or even the lecture that precedes every course that bothers me the most—it’s the fact that I don’t have a say. More than anything, when I go to a restaurant, I want to be able to choose my own wine, even if the sommelier thinks he or she knows best what I should drink. I want to explore and hopefully find some gem. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to suggestions. I’ve enjoyed really interesting wines thanks to some top sommeliers. But I want the final choice to be, if not mine, at least a joint decision.
Of course, I know that a lot of wine lovers, including John, enjoy wine pairings for some of the very reasons I dislike them: the element of surprise and the constant presence of the sommelier. Susanne Lerescu, sommelier at Restaurant Latour at Crystal Springs Resort in Hamburg, N.J., said most of her customers order the wine pairing. They “love contact with the sommelier, and they love learning,” she said.
Restaurants also tend to like pairings; several sommeliers noted they are a great way to make money. Sommeliers have wide latitude when it comes to the wines they choose for pairings, and can opt for wines that are inexpensive but obscure so diners won’t know what they cost (unless they check wine-searcher.com). They can get more mileage out of a 25.4-ounce bottle when the average pour is 3 ounces per taste compared with the standard 5- to 6-ounce glass.
AdvertisementEven so, Ms. Lerescu has mixed feelings about pairings. “It’s almost a shame because we have such a great cellar,” she said. With nearly 75,000 bottles, Latour’s cellar is truly prodigious and includes many rare, expensive bottles that wouldn’t be cost-effective to open for small pours.
Pricewise, the restaurant’s wine-pairing menu is on the low side at $65 for six wines to accompany the $145 seven-course tasting menu. Many I’ve seen start at $80 a person. At Alinea restaurant, which functioned as a pop-up in Miami while the regular Chicago location undergoes renovations, the Gold Wine Pairing costs $495 a person—more than the tasting menu it accompanies, which can have 12 to 22 courses and runs between $275 and $385.
“It’s the first time that the wine pairing is more expensive than the tasting menu,” said Alinea Group wine director Jill Zimorski, who noted that the Gold Pairing includes special vintages of Champagne and rare Madeiras. The restaurant also offers a standard pairing for $150 a person and a reserve option for $275.
Ms. Zimorski and Ms. Lerescu were the only sommeliers I spoke with who said they would consider buying pairings on their own dime. Still, Ms. Zimorski remains a bit leery. “Wine pairings are a great way to get ripped off,” she said.
All the other sommeliers order wine by the bottle when they go out, sticking to one or two wines that will go well with multiple courses. “I like to find something versatile,” said Dean Fuerth, wine director at Betony restaurant in New York. He added that “wine pairings are a cop-out on the part of beverage service” at many restaurants because they often include wines that aren’t particularly good.
Not at his, of course. Mr. Fuerth devised Betony’s $130 pairing menu with chef Bryce Shuman. The two work closely together, with Mr. Shuman sometimes even adjusting a course so that it will better suit a wine.
At Restaurant Gary Danko, in San Francisco, wine director Jeremiah Morehouse said he loves “orchestrating” a pairing but noted that only about 35% of customers opt for the $85 menu that accompanies the $119 five-course tasting. With the rest of his clientele, Mr. Morehead does a brisk business in half-bottles, which he said allow for more flexibility. The restaurant’s large wine list includes around 200 half-bottles.
All the talk about wine pairing made me think I should try it again. I chose Blue Hill in New York, one of the restaurants I had recommended to John. Blue Hill boasts an all-tasting-menu format and a large and impressive wine list. Pairings cost either $68 or $88 for the standard four-course Daily Menu ($88) or six-course Farmer’s Feast ($98), respectively.
My husband and I opted for the less expensive of the two menus. Wine director Michelle Biscieglia said she liked to start with bubbles, which sounded promising. Every sommelier I interviewed said they started their pairings with a glass of Champagne. Ours began with a half-glass of Domaine Pierre Richard, a sparkling wine from France’s Jura region. It was pleasant, if a bit rustic, and the wine’s earthy flavors complemented the amuse-bouche of exquisitely tiny root vegetables and Brussels sprout tarts—as delicious as they were minuscule. I hoped the food would get larger and the wines would improve.
Ms. Biscieglia returned with the two wines for the first course. She paired a minerally white from Savoie, France (2011 Domaine Louis Magnin Roussette de Savoie), with my husband’s winter root vegetables and a zippy white from Greece (2013 Sclavos Robola of Cephalonia) with my celery-root risotto—both solid choices that paired well with the food.
Next was a Corsican rosé (2014 Domaine Comte Abbatucci Gris Impérial) for my husband’s monkfish and a light-bodied, rather tart 2104 Domaine Tissot Trousseau Singulier for my Jerusalem artichoke with smoked cheese and bacon bits. “I was hoping for something a bit richer,” I said to Ms. Biscieglia when she stopped by to see how we liked the matches. She nodded, explaining that she focused more on the acidity than the weight of the wine. The rosé, which Ms. Biscieglia said she had served at her wedding, was light and pleasant and, like almost all the other wines in the pairing, cost about $25 per bottle retail.
“It’s all going by so fast,” my husband observed as our small plates were whisked away and our 3-ounce glasses were soon drained.
The third course featured a rich 2013 Stolpman Estate Syrah with lamb neck and belly, and a 1985 Caves São João Baga Tinto, a red wine from Portugal’s Bairrada region, with venison. Unfortunately, my wine, the Caves São João, tasted flat and tinny—it was corked. I flagged down Ms. Biscieglia, who mentioned she had thought the wine might be corked as she whisked the glass away. She reappeared with a different bottle of the same wine, as well as a rather rustic red from the Canary Islands (2013 Monje Listán Negro Tradicional) to give me another option. The noncorked version was pleasant and impressively vibrant, but it was interesting rather than great. The last course included two dessert wines: a Greek Vin Santo and a late-harvest wine from southwest France.
Our dinner cost more than $400 and lasted just under two hours. The portions had been small, but the food was good. The wines were solid, thoughtful choices, even if they weren’t bottles I would have chosen myself. And the corked bottle was certainly unfortunate. A few days after my visit, Ms. Biscieglia wrote to say she’d served the Caves São João again and it was “singing.” Subsequent patrons were clearly more fortunate. And maybe that’s the biggest problem with wine pairing: It’s all too often a matter of luck.
I emailed John to see where he and his wife had gone to dinner and find out if they had liked the wine pairing. It turned out the dinner had been postponed. “But your note is a nice reminder to book it,” he wrote. I didn’t say a word. Discretion is the better part of valor, after all.