WB food and wine pairing discussions that perplex me

[Chuck_Anderson]

@Chris Seiber

Neither I nor anyone else said that we hope that every response to a “what wine pairs with food X” thread is major wine categories like cabernet, chardonnay or pinot.

Well sure, but make the easiest targets!

And then all the “don’t drink wine with that, just drink beer” responses puzzle me as well; do that many of you seriously not drink wine whenever you’re eating something that isn’t down-the-middle European or wine country cuisine? When you’re having Korean BBQ or carne asada, you seriously can’t find a wine that goes pretty well with it?

Adult-onset gluten allergy means I never take the “just drink beer” route (OK, there’s one or two worth drinking) so I’m drinking wine with all that stuff. KBBQ, I usually go for soju but I’ll take your challenge and bring my own bottle(s) next time.

It feels to me like there is some weird snob factor to declaring that drinking wine, or all but the more obscure wines, with many foods out there is an unsophisticated or foolish endeavor.

Aha, so are fair game after all!

Consider checking the calibration of your snobometer, it may be a tad oversensitive.

I still feel pretty strongly that most WBers mostly drink the major categories of wine, and it’s just a minority who don’t do that who are posting their CT information in this thread.

You could be right, but, again, do the 95%-American-mainstream-varietal drinkers post much on the pairing threads and/or drink most of their wine with food? How many of them are as keen on thinking about pairings as the Assyrtiko and Pigato crowd?

[Richard_Malloy]

Chris, I tend to read the food pairing threads as well, and in my totally unscientific review of the data as it exists in my hopelessly fallible memory it seems that the most recommended wines for food are red Burgs, white Burgs, and Champagne. Perhaps Bdx blends, but since I rarely drink those my mind deselects them from memory in a mental process I believe is known as “confirmation bias”.

So on the basis of not very much I suppose I reject your premise as it seems to me that the major varieties from the long established regions are the most recommended!

[Chris_Seiber]

Chuck, I think we can find common ground – in future food pairing threads, we both just recommend Crapula. That must go with pretty much everything.

Thanks for your spirited thoughts in this thread.

[D.Callahan]

I looked at my consumption over the past year and found I drank 1.3% Cab, 1.3% Chard, 1.1% Zin, 1.1% PN and then a variety of different wines to make up 100%. I drink wine almost every day with dinner and my wife and I typically have just one glass so we actually drink with food. These are the wines we prefer and most pair reasonably well with our meals. We are somewhat limited by my wife’s preferences as she is sensitive to high acid in wines and I don’t feel I should exclude her from enjoying wine with dinner. When we get together with friends the big boys can come out to play as we use wine as our cocktail choice and enjoy them immensely. I do not believe in limiting wine drinking solely to food pairing even though I do enjoy a good matchup when I find one.

I appear to be one of the “majority” that keeps being mentioned.

[Markus_S]

@Chris Seiber

… major wine categories like cabernet, chardonnay or pinot. I just wondered why that is almost never an answer, since that is the large majority of what most of us drink…

You’re assumptions are false, bro. I have a cabernet-based wine maybe 3-4x/year, chardonnay perhaps 3x, pinot more often, but still let’s say 12/15x/yr, so it is not the majority of what I drink. I recommend things that I have in my cellar (and that any prudent, law-abiding citizen should have also! ).
You live in an area where it is easy to find the stranger stuff, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand that people Do like these things,no?

[Markus_S]

Oh, a good point about beer. Since this is a WINE board, I don’t even see how beer should get an honorable mention. We should be steering the conversation to vino if at all possible.

[Chuck_Anderson]

Chris, next time you visit NYC let’s go out to Queens for KBBQ (it’s not LA’s K-town, but it’ll do), and I’ll hunt down the Crapula in advance. Their Reserva - en magnum - if it exists!

[Jay_T]

@Markus S

@Chris Seiber

… major wine categories like cabernet, chardonnay or pinot. I just wondered why that is almost never an answer, since that is the large majority of what most of us drink…

You’re assumptions are false, bro. I have a cabernet-based wine maybe 3-4x/year, chardonnay perhaps 3x, pinot more often, but still let’s say 12/15x/yr, so it is not the majority of what I drink. I recommend things that I have in my cellar (and that any prudent, law-abiding citizen should have also! ).
You live in an area where it is easy to find the stranger stuff, so it shouldn’t be that difficult to understand that people Do like these things,no?

You may the type who drinks skin-contact whites from Lithuania on Mondays, Argentinian nebbiolo roses on Tuesdays, and Canadian ice wines on Wednesdays, but I don’t think that means Chris’s assumptions about the “large majority” are wrong. While it’s not a one-to-one comparison, there was a recent thread on consumption history (see More CellarTracker fun - My Consumption History - WINE TALK - WineBerserkers) that appears to indicate that, in our community, there is one group of mostly California/Oregon/Washington drinkers (almost certainly pinot, syrah, cabernet, rhone blends, and chardonnay), another group of burgundy/bordeaux folks, and then a smattering of riesling fans, champagne partisans, italian enthusiasts, and wide-variety junkies (maybe the category for you!). The first two categories seem to be the largest, based both on the thread (self-selected, I know) and my own unscientific but extensive observations.