It doesn’t help that the wine pairings at Robuchon start at what, $300-400 (IIRC they go up to close to $1K)?
There are good pairings and bad pairings possible at all sorts of price points, but the lack of transparency relative to ordering off the wine list (or BYO, of course) makes the consequences of a bad pairing higher as price increases. In other words, the wines to be paired usually aren’t listed so it’s hard to assess the value up front in the same way that one would assess it before ordering a $300-400 bottle. Asking to list off all the pairings before ordering is too cumbersome.
I’m not particularly worried about value across a longer tasting menu when we’re talking an $80 pairing. That’s the cost of pouring even inexpensive wines across 6-8+ courses and, if done well, I can’t (or shouldn’t be able to) do better from the list. The lack of transparency becomes a concern with Robuchonesque pairings that start at much higher price points, and I’ve rarely found value in these the few times I’ve done it.
In my experience in NYC the article is not accurate.
I’ve only done wine pairings at very high end restaurants but I’ve always enjoyed it. The wines have usually been good pairings, often interesting choices, and I’ve always had more than I cared to drink.
In general WSJ’s articles outside of strict hard news/business are so often off-point I wonder what audience they’re intended for, what kind of reporter is writing them, and what kind of editorial decisions were made before they got on the page. This article is far from the worst offender.
We just ate at Alinea here in Miami this weekend. The food and everything else was fantastic, but the wine pairing was highly disappointing. We were told there was no wine list, it was either the wine pairing or a few options available BTG. They implied the BTG options were pretty much for anybody who only wanted one glass throughout the meal, and was not encouraged. The wine pairing options were $150, $275 or $450, and we opted for the $150 pairing.
The red wines were an average Nebbiolo, a Kistler RRV, and Quilceda Creek’s basic red wine. The white wines were even more common. All were the current vintage. Pours were small but they topped them off occasionally. I was definitely expecting something more exciting or at least more rare. I felt everything they served I could find easily at Total Wine. It was amusing to hear the sommelier to hype up how well the wines would pair and how interesting they were, and then when she announced the actual wine, there was a collective “meh” at the table.
It was still a great experience, but it felt the meal was done by people at the top of their game, and the wine pairings were done by somebody who took their first wine pairing class last weekend.
I think the wine pairing mentioned in the article sounds quite good. There’s even a mature wine in there (the Dao). It wasn’t to the author’s taste, but that’s a different problem. While I used to order wine pairings frequently in the past, I rarely do it today, simply because at least in Germany, the pairing is usually without a real common thread, it’s often not very interesting and I am overwhelmed by eating ten dishes and drinking five different wines with dinner. My wife isn’t keen on wine pairings either, so we most often just order a bottle even though that may not fit perfectly with every course.
What wine pairings are definitely good for (when composed well) is broadening the horizon. Especially through wine pairings ordered in France, I learned so much about producers I didn’t have on my radar at all. Reading through many threads here or looking at instagram or facebook postings, it seems to me that the choice of producers that are being discussed is really narrow. It’s Overnoy, Ganevat, Jamet, Allemand, Chave, Roulot, Pierre Yves Colin-Morey, Raveneau, Dauvissat, Selosse, etc. all the time. If everyone always orders those producers off the wine lists just because they’re available and affordable, how else than through a wine pairing does anyone discover new and exciting producers? And there are a lot of them. They just need to be discovered. And wine pairings put together by good sommeliers can definitely lead to such discoveries, my experience is.
I have never done a wine tasting menu but have a question: Do they publish the wines that you will be served in advance so that you can decide or is each course a surprise?
We have had some great pairing menus as well as some disappointing pairing menus.
I remember Wild Boar in Nashville served us '83 Lafite on a paring meal which only cost about 120 bucks per person, all in. The other wines were good too–it was when they were liquidating/circling the drain.
Exactly - the cynic in me makes me think they’re just trying to move wine. Kind of like a restaurant trying to sell you the special entree on a Sunday or Monday from what they didn’t move on Friday and Saturday.
Every time I’ve looked, the tasting menu will tell you the wine pairings as well. E.g. “Third Course, Duck breast with blah blah blah, Wine Pairing = 2012 Domaine XYZ Santenay.”
But there usually isn’t any deciding, other than whether to do a full wine pairing for all the courses or not. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one where you had more than one wine to choose from to pair with a flight. It might happen occasionally somewhere.
I think it depends on the restaurant and whether they have a somm on board or not and whether they are committed to a wine and food program. Have been to some here in Santa Fe that were great, one in Vegas that was great but many more where the wine was a dump of excess stock and not good pairings at all. We usually go with a large enough group to buy 3-4 bottles of wine to do our own pairings if we can. Just drinking reds is a limited view to me as there are a lot of great whites and sparklers out there and a whole meal with only sparklers is a great one as well.
Do you also want red sauce of your choosing for each of those options, or are you OK handing the chef the reins? What’s the difference?
I can understand disappointment with a pairing experience of low quality or poor value, but it’s harder for me to get my mind around (what appears to be to be) a combination of disregard for compatibility and an insistence on absolute control over one element of the meal but not others.
As for cynicism about a restaurant’s motives: you may be right, but then why trust the same people with your food? Why would they only screw you on the wine? There’s ultimately way less transparency in the kitchen: you don’t know what they paid for the ingredients, the quality and freshness, the preparation process…
Many years ago, I was traveling in New York for business, and had dinner at Jean Georges. The tasting menu and wine pairings combined to make one of the best meals of my life. Each pairing was perfect, I got to try far more wines than I otherwise would have, and I drank several things I’d never had before. Yeah, it was expensive, but it was worth it. Just like I love getting to try so many different foods with a tasting menu, I love trying lots of different wines with well-done pairings. I’ve definitely had some lackluster pairings, but I don’t go that route very often – typically only if I have good reason to believe that they’ll be good.
Since we’re posting anecdotes, I’ll also mention that the single best restaurant meal of my life was at the now-sadly-departed Cyrus in Healdsburg. We did the wine pairing, which was fantastic. I’ll remember that meal for the rest of my life.
Perhaps the author of this article would be more comfortable at a place like French Laundry. No pairings, just a rather aloof and ridiculous somm that, without batting an eyelash, suggested in response to my want for variety (I had not anticipated that they wouldn’t offer tastings) that my wife and I go for a mix of bottles and halves (4x above retail) that would have been twice the cost of the meal itself.
Pairings are like anything else, and can be great or bad, to your tastes or not. It’s quite a ridiculous generalization the author is making. Pairings I’ve had at, for example, Alinea and Le Bernardin, have created some of the greatest culinary experiences of my life.
I had a more humble one just last night at a restaurant here in Portland (Pailey’s Place) and it was perfectly suited to the meal. They weren’t all necessarily my taste but they went well with the food (better than a single bottle would have) and were a good value. Sometimes that’s all it needs to be.
A lot of restaurants use wine lists and wine pairings as a big money maker - at these places, no matter the format, I don’t enjoy the experience as a wine-loving consumer. I always laugh at the arguments of for why wines is marked up 3x (or more BTG or paired) such as “the cost of the wine service” (glasses don’t break that often) or “curating a wine list of this depth is challenging” (we are paying way too much in rent so have to make it back somewhere).
That being said, there are some restaurants that do charge more reasonable prices and many that allow corkage (at least in NYC) so there are definitely other solutions.
One thing I always wondered though - shouldn’t there be at least some small subset of restaurants that pair great cuisine with a really thoughtful wine pairing program? I’d love to go to a venue with a nice tasting menu and have the somm come over to discuss the diner’s preferences in wine, likes/dislikes, maybe even favorite producers or regions to get a more specific idea and then take the reigns? In theory he or she could come to the table with each course with 2 options for the particular course and allow diners to pick one. The economics should still work if this is a restaurant that already has a reasonably priced wine list - with Coravins for the super high end wines and enough throughput for the middle tier wines, there wouldn’t be any hesitation in opening good bottles. If a wine pairing is priced at $150 / person, why shouldn’t they get a bottle’s worth of wine that’s actually worth $150 - just split with the other diners in the room doing the same thing to increase variety?
Once they established credibility, what wine-lover wouldn’t splurge on occasion? If the wines for their highest level pairings included bottles like a Selosse lieu-dit, an '02 PC Meursault, a '99 top tier Barolo and a '01 Auselese from a good name, would anyone complain about the pricing if they got a bottle’s worth of volume for $350-$400?
In most cases, I’d rather just order a bottle or a couple of half bottles. I’ve had consistently great pairings at Journeyman in Somerville, MA, though. They’ll throw in a beer or cocktail from time to time, but it’s always mostly wine, and sometimes all wine. The guy who does their wine has really impressed me with his selections. I actually think they do a better job than I could with a lot of the pairings. None of the wines are great, but I’m not ordering great wines at most restaurants anyway, and I don’t think the value is any better on the list. I got a nice bottle of Champagne for the meal instead of the pairings once. Champagne really does go with everything, but we’ve never gone that route again. The pairings are that good, every time. I am sure there are other restaurants doing it that well.
Some of the best pairings I’ve ever experienced were recommendations by, or sampled at, the wineries themselves.
Some of the worst pairings I’ve had were because of great expectations from expensive bottles, only to have the costly wine outperformed by a much less pricy wine that mated better with the dish.
Bottom line is why not try for yourself? You never know when & where you’ll have an epiphany.
My wife and I went to Manresa with another couple and we split two wine pairings, one each of their two levels. While the price is probably a little high, I was really happy with both, particularly the higher end one. Here are my notes on what we had - I believe most of these are from the higher end pairing but probably not all. I started buying the Vincent Beaurepaire after this. It’s really good. The Xurus was a real eye opener too… nothing I would have bought on my own but it was really interesting to try.
J Lassaigne Rose
Entre Nous Rose
Xurus SB
Vincent Santenay Beaurepaire 11
Voillot Volnay Fremiets 10
La Rochelle Pinot Meunièr 12
Kathryn Kennedy CS 09
Ramos Pinto 20yr