Marcel Deiss… I am intellectually quite attracted by his concept of field blends to better express terroir and had some great bottles in the past. The trick is to find the right pairing though and I messed up yesterday.
I somehow thought that this Schoenenbourg was predominantly Riesling and expected something fresh with citric notes. That would have paired nicely with the hamachi with yuzu vinaigrette we got from a great local restaurant.
Turns out the expression is much warmer and darker though (field blend of all pinots + auxerrois). This would have gone nicely with a lobster in a buttery sauce or even some fried chicken. Unfortunately, it got lost amid the citric violence of the dish. As the wine is still very young and primary, I’ll hide my remaining bottles for another 10 years and hope some neurons will trigger a reminder to pair it properly.
Any other experiences with this wine? I also have one bottle of ‘04 that I’ll try at some point.
What then? In my experience the only way for a wine to stand up to citric qualities is to have a wine that is at least equally citric. It is a quality that cancels acidity and fruit, so a wine with lower acidity and/or milder fruit easily comes across as flabby or underwhelming (which might be the thing that happened here).
It’s basically the same thing as with sweet dishes: since sweetness of the dish and wine’s residual sugar cancel each other out, you’ll want a wine that is sweeter than the dish or otherwise the wine will taste just thin, watery and bitter.
I just recently purchased some of his blends under the brand name “Vignoble du Rêveur”. I like to let them settle a bit before I pop one open. Never had them before although I do love his regular bottlings.
“Vignoble du Reveur” is Mathieu Deiss’ own label. Mathieu and his father Jean-Michael run Marcel Deiss. Vignoble du Reveur is a bit more experimental (some whites with carbonic maceration and aged in amphorae) than Marcel Deiss.
I agree! Anyone who’s tried to pair Sauternes with dessert has encountered this: even if the wine is sufficiently well-endowed with acidity/sugar to stand up to the food, they just end up shouting at each other and the nuances become collateral damage. My point is that, if you’re eating food that is particularly acidic / sugary / both, it’s better not to attempt a wine pairing. Have a cocktail, or sparkling water, cider, beer, etc. If you do have wine, expect that it might not show at its very best
I didn’t mean that. Dishes that are very hot (chili-hot, not temperature) are hard, since chili heat boosts alcohol and diminishes fruit. A sweet, low-alcohol Riesling can stand up to some heat, but even they have their upper limits.
However, sweet or acidic dishes are no problem - you just need to have a wine that’s sweeter or more acidic in comparison. It’s quite rare to have dishes with which you couldn’t pair a wine - unless it’s a sugar-sprinkled lemon you’re eating.
These are just basics of wine-and-food pairing. Some elements need similar elements to work, some need something else. I’ve seen many people say they don’t want to have a sweet wine with sweet dishes because thar’s too much sweetness at one go, but it doesn’t work that way - since the sweetness of the dish cancels out the sweetness of the wine, it appears much drier than it actually is. If a Sauternes has enough sweetness, I haven’t seen any problems it pairing with a sweeter dish. I really don’t understand your analogy of wine and dish screaming on top of each other. Maybe I’m just thinking of completely different dishes, but the ones I’d pair with Sauternes would be very poor pairings with a beer or a cider.
With bitterness the thing is completely different: bitterness in wine doesn’t cancel out bitterness in food or vice versa, but instead they just stack up and might even emphasize each other, so a dish with a bitter element can often pair quite poorly with a wine that has a streak of bitterness.
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