12 Angry men: Who Are They

[Ed_Murray]

Good grief! Eat the food you like, drink the wine you like - with or without the food! Who gives a rats ass what anyone else thinks? Let those insecure bastards buy and drink their own wine!

[Rudi_Finkler]

@David Glasser

@Philip Ente

Interesting- Was at Marea recently and saw bottles of Leoville Las Cases and Bechyville going by and I remarked to my friend, Wilfred van Gorp- what kind of jerk drinks Medocs with Italian food?

The same kind of jerk that put them on the wine list in the first place?

Did you check out what they ordered for dinner before passing judgment on their wine/food pairing acumen? The bistecca looks like a good match for Bordeaux.

I can think of a reason or two to call JK a jerk, and I can think of plenty of poor wine/food pairings, but I can’t think of a reason why poor wine/food pairing choices would make me consider someone a jerk.

Since when does one need a good reason to call somebody a jerk on a wine forum?

[Bill_Klapp_deactivated]

Good point, Rudi…you jerk! By the way, I believe that Rudi is an Angry Man, at least sometimes. I think that we should give him a nickname. The Bordeaux-nator?

[Bill_Klapp_deactivated]

@Guillaume Deschamps

@Tom Blach

I don’t much enjoy French wines in any other context, Brian.

Agreed. Almost 100% of my cellar is French. Luckily there’s no other country producing food worth eating, so I’m all good.

So true, and the only truly great French food remaining is the sandwich known as jambon beurre. One even risks suffering a crappy baguette or substandard ham or butter there. And not all wines pair well with a jambon beurre. That being the case, one can only imagine how sad the food scene is for the rest of the world. Here in Italia, we subsist only upon the whitish fungus that we can pick off of the roots of certain trees in the fall and the mushrooms that the French call ceps, which I take it were some earlier gift that the French bestowed upon the Italians to keep us from starving…

[Rudi_Finkler]

@Bill Klapp

Good point, Rudi…you jerk! By the way, I believe that Rudi is an Angry Man, at least sometimes. I think that we should give him a nickname. The Bordeaux-nator?

‘Jerk’ is OK, Bill, thanks for the compliment, but ‘Bordeaux-nator’. Just wait!

[Brian_Gilp]

@David Glasser

The same kind of jerk that put them on the wine list in the first place?

I was talking to the Somm at Citronelle many years ago about the wine selection and he was very honest about the fact that he had a lot of wine on the list that he felt went with nothing on the menu. But he sold a lot of it and as most of it was high in Cal Cab, they made a lot of money off of it as well so as long as people were ordering it, he was keeping it on the list. It is after all a business.

[Bill_Klapp_deactivated]

@Brian Gilp

@David Glasser

The same kind of jerk that put them on the wine list in the first place?

I was talking to the Somm at Citronelle many years ago about the wine selection and he was very honest about the fact that he had a lot of wine on the list that he felt went with nothing on the menu. But he sold a lot of it and as most of it was high in Cal Cab, they made a lot of money off of it as well so as long as people were ordering it, he was keeping it on the list. It is after all a business.

My thought as well. You can blame somebody for having too few good, appropriate and/or fairly priced choices, but you cannot blame them for filling a certain number of slots with what sells. That said, the cellars of some the the big national or regional high-end steak houses really abuse the “what sells” idea. I suspect that, by offering little else, they train well-to-do but unspohisticated patrons to drink the high-margin stuff on the list…

[Mark_Golodetz]

A fascinating thread drift; I would like to see this as its own separate topic rather than a late addition to the original thread.

[Bill_Klapp_deactivated]

In the now-immortal words of Jean-Luc Picard, “Make it so.”

[Tom_Blach]

@Fred C

@Tom Blach

To posit that bordeaux wines don’t go with Italian food is merely to state the obvious, as it it is to say that piedmontese wines don’t go with tuscan dishes.

These days, with chefs combining cuisines and crossing boundaries (eg. Asian and French augmented by flares of Spanish or South American) such rigid and simple formulas for wine pairing seem a bit out of place and impractical.

I agree , but life is short and I don’t much enjoy all that crossing boundaries stuff. Is it not possible to argue that such things go better with wines from non-classic areas?Each to their own, of course.

[Bob_Kaminski]

Poor food-wine paring may be a case of worlds colliding…or not.

Independent George - Worlds collide

[Greg_Pierce]

Actually, you are all jerks. The only proper pairing with any food is 07 CdP - from magnum.

[Bob_Kaminski]

I once had an Ice Coffee with steak…should I hate myself???

[Jorge_Henriquez]

@Bob Kaminski

I once had an Ice Coffe with steak…should I jerk myself???

Fixed it for you.

[Bob_Kaminski]

@Jorge Henriquez

@Bob Kaminski

I once had an Ice Coffe with steak…should I jerk myself???

Fixed it for you.

Thank you. I see you gave me a double dose of jerking.

[Jurgen_Steinke]

To even complicate all that: The famous Restaurant in Florence called Enoteca Pinchiorri that serves 3 star Michelin starred Italian Food has one of the best wine lists possible. WITH TONS OF FINE BORDEAUX AND BURGUNDY ON IT. I know that because I eat there 3 times. And I confess: Ordered Bordeaux and Burgundy. One time I had the menu including wine and all of the wines were FRENCH. Recommended by the Sommelier. One course was Pasta with Pesto … more Italy on a plate is not possible.

[Jay_Miller]

@Philip Ente

Interesting- Was at Marea recently and saw bottles of Leoville Las Cases and Bechyville going by and I remarked to my friend, Wilfred van Gorp- what kind of jerk drinks Medocs with Italian food?..

While I’ve never had Bordeaux at Marea they do a beautiful Creekstone steak that would match very well. Can’t think of much else where it would be a first choice but there are other items where it wouldn’t be bad.

I have fond memories of bringing a Clos St. Denis and pairing it with the wonderful guinea hen that used to be on the menu.

[John_Morris]

@Jürgen Steinke

To even complicate all that: The famous Restaurant in Florence called Enoteca Pinchiorri that serves 3 star Michelin starred Italian Food has one of the best wine lists possible. WITH TONS OF FINE BORDEAUX AND BURGUNDY ON IT. I know that because I eat there 3 times. And I confess: Ordered Bordeaux and Burgundy. One time I had the menu including wine and all of the wines were FRENCH. Recommended by the Sommelier. One course was Pasta with Pesto … more Italy on a plate is not possible.

As long as we’re at the confessional, perhaps the most surprising successful food-wine pairing I can recall was a 1974 La Mission Haut Brion with pasta and a homemade pesto sauce that Claude Kolm served me in the mid-80s.

(Actually, now that I think about it, a Mueller-Catoir Spatburgunder with BBQ chicken is probably the weirdest successful match.)

[Craig_G]

@John Morris

As long as we’re at the confessional, perhaps the most surprising successful food-wine pairing I can recall was a 1974 La Mission Haut Brion with pasta and a homemade pesto sauce that Claude Kolm served me in the mid-80s.

What a jerk!

[Rudi_Finkler]

I can’t fathom it. A world full of jerks….