This spring season, young vegetables and fruits, fresh home-made cheeses and baby greens all find their way to the plates of The Inn at Dos Brisas. To complement these new and vibrant flavors, wine choices should be just as inviting. Christopher Bates, General Manager and Advanced Sommelier, provides a synopsis of how best to pair wines that possess the perfect sense of balance to the many earthy delicacies just picked from the gardens --

 

In order to allow food and drink to shine, sommeliers must identify the point at which both elements achieve a balance, allowing secondary flavors to come alive. Chefs understand this concept well. They are always adding the finishing touch; a squeeze of lemon to balance richness, a hint of fruit to offset acidity, a touch of salt to neutralize bitterness. Wine makers know it too, adding a little more acid to balance overt fruit, a touch more alcohol to fill out the palate, or a little residual sugar to balance the acid. It is a question of taste.

 

No matter the experience of a diner’s palate, human beings can taste only five qualities: sweet, sour, salty, bitter and savory. Dishes are made tastier by balancing two or more of these elements. The more that’s balanced, the more powerful the impact of the dish tends to be. In general, sweet balances sour, salt balances sweet, sweet masks bitter. Savory adds depth; alcohol adds body and also activates the sweetness sensors, meaning it reacts similarly with acid. Tannin will be balanced by acid, but not vice versa.

 

Let either the food or the wine be a starting point. If the wine is too sweet, make a dish that is somewhat austere. If the food is too spicy, look for a wine with a bit of excessive sweetness. A full-bodied stew, for example, needs a fuller bodied red with earthy notes. An entrée of light white fish with new vegetables and herbs is in need of an acidic wine.

 

Matching the body of a wine with a specific entrée invites both to improve. A young red wine with intense tannins can be paired with a steak. The proteins in the steak will actually bind with the tannins before they can attach themselves to the drinker’s tongue, thus lowering the impact of the tannin and allowing the wine’s complexity to shine. The steak makes the wine taste better, and vice versa. If this steak is eaten on its own, its proteins build up. This, in effect, clogs the taste buds and the diner becomes desensitized to what he or she is eating. With the right wine, on the other hand, as the steak’s proteins begin to coat the palate, the wine’s tannins strip them away, thus refreshing the palate for the next bite, making it as impactful as the first. Indeed, protein-rich foods such as oats, peanuts, peanut butter, and tofu, are equally capable of buffering those tannins, and would be cleansed from the palate by binding to the tannins.

 

Another point to remember when considering how to balance the dish is the “concentration impact.” During a progression of courses, taste should increase gently, so a diner is less likely to get a “zero-to-sixty” jolt. When tasting wines, for example, a jump from a moderately acidic wine to a wine of high acidity will make the high acid wine seem less acidic. A move from a high acid wine to a moderate acid wine will make the latter seem to possess even lower acid.

 

When a wine is balanced, each component is integral to that balance; if one component is altered, it will make everything else seem out of balance. So when you have a sweet wine with dessert, if the food is sweeter than the wine, the wine’s sweetness will be diminished. When that happens, the acid may be more pronounced, or the wine may just seem ‘dried out.’ It happens, as well, when the acid in the dish is too high; this can make the wine seem less acidic, not necessarily a good thing if it goes as far as making the wine seem ‘flat.’ Working with professional sommeliers can finesse the complexities of food and wine pairing.

 

Asparagus: Every gourmand has a pairing secret for these notoriously hard-to-pair vegetables. The wine staff at The Inn at Dos Brisas recommends low alcohol wines with herbal and acidic notes. Wines from Cantina Terlano are naturals here, especially the Pinot Blancs; Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand is a winner here, too. If you must push the envelope with reds, consider a New Zealand Pinot. Hoppy beer like Victory Brewing’s Hop Devil Ale or eau de vie like Clear Creak Douglas Fir Distillate are also contenders with asparagus.

 

Beets: There is an earthy/dirty note to fresh beets, and cooked beets have a lot of sweetness. Accordingly, Riesling, South African Vin Jaune and Chenin Blancs are good companions. Savenierres, a dry Chenin Blanc from just up the river from Vouvray, are an increasingly popular option. Skip the reds. They do not work.

 

Cucumbers: With their notes of unripe fruit, apple and melon; cooling character and light soapiness, cucumbers prefer wines that are green and dry. Grüner Veltliner and St. Bris are wonderful with cucumbers, as is Cheverny from the Loire. Cucumbers can emphasize bitterness so wood-aged wines are out. Cucumbers also lack acid – remember how good cukes are with vinegar -- and so a high acid wine is great. Pimms is other great choice, as is gin.

 

Herbs: Even as an accent, herbs can determine the wine best suited to a dish. Rosemary loves earthy savory notes, including wines from the Rhone and Bordeaux, as well as Sangiovese. Marigold and tarragon-like rich whites where they add complexity. Mint and its kin - basil, lavender, rosemary, sage and sweet marjoram - all work with Riesling, Albarino, Grüner Veltliner, Riesling, and Torrantes.

 

Onions: On the palate, raw onion brings some sweetness and a bit of an herbal tea note. A wine like Muscadet can cut the burn of uncooked onion, increase the sweetness of the wine, and bring out more of the green chlorophyll notes. Wines with low alcohol are preferable as the onion will amplify the alcohol burn. A Riesling with some sweetness works very well with onion, bringing a nutty note. In turn, onions bring minty notes forward in the wine, making a young bottle taste more mature. Sakes work too. Red does not work well with the raw notes, they seem to dry a wine out too much. Cooked onions are another story, and as with zucchinis, browning increases the vegetable’s meatiness. As long as there are enough savory notes, a full blown red is in order. Hermitage, Oregon Pinot, Amarone, and Rioja support cooked onions.

 

Peppers: The essence of a green flavor, this vegetable can overwhelm other green flavors, so Sauvignon Blancs are out, as is Grüner Veltliner. The taste of peppers can make a sweet Riesling more crisp and balanced. It can help balance a ripe white burgundy. Fruit-forward reds with medium alcohol are good; peppers make them seem less ripe. Peppers lend old school Bordeaux an unpleasant metallic texture; save them for another day.

 

Potato: This vegetable is dictated by preparation. With the earthy nutty flavor of potatoes, look to mimic that in the wine, and due to the flavor’s subtlety, look for something not too full or concentrated. If potatoes are the star of the dish, and no other defining element is present, the wine can go red or white. Champagne, White Burgundy, Arbois, Vin Jaune, Fino Sherry, White Rioja or Soave would all be great choices. Southern Rhône reds like Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Piedmont Nebbiolo, Red Burgundy or German Pinot Noir would be a good direction for red wines. Again, the particular preparation is the key. These wines are recommended for salt-roasted potatoes without cream or butter.

 

Sweet Corn: Sauvignon Blancs from the Loire Valley are perfect for this sweet and creamy vegetable. Served with corn, oaked Chardonnay adds an unpleasant spoiled milk note, and Riesling is cloying. Muscat, especially from Alsace, is magical with corn. The staff at Dos Brisas often adds fresh Mexican marigold or tarragon to dry Rieslings paired with corn.

 

Zucchini: With their slight green flavor, noticeable acid, and hints of citrus and minty herbs, raw zucchini takes well to crisp whites. Muscadet, Grüner Veltliner, Alsace Riesling and Roero Arneis are all winners here. With the addition of heat and fat, zucchini tastes more savory, even meatier due to the caramelization of its sugars. Heavier whites like White Burgundy, Tocai Friulano, and richer styles of Champagne, Sancerre and Pouilly Fume are good choices, as are some lighter reds like Gamay (from Beaujolais, Cote du Rhône or Oregon).

 

 

Remember: freshly picked vegetables have more sugar.  This sweetness informs their flavor. Postharvest vegetables emit ethylene, a hormone that speeds up ripening time and contributes to their deterioration. Garden-to-table vegetables are more likely to have retained all vitamins, and released less ethylene and water.

 

Root vegetables tend to have an earth mineral note while green vegetables have a “green flavor,” like chlorophyll. Green, as a flavor, can be challenging to pair, as it typically responds to acidity and can make a rich wine seem ‘flabby.’  It is best to stick with wines with similar green notes. Earthy root vegetables work best with Chenin Blanc (Vouvray, Savennierres), Vintage Champagne (with age) and Rhone whites.

 

Some vegetables, especially artichokes, asparagus, and spinach, have compounds that are notoriously hard to pair, usually due to chemical reactions that cause some undesirable effects. Often times, these vegetables will make a wine taste metallic, sweet, or bitter. Fresh green vegetables tend to go nicely with Gruner Veltliner, Gin Cocktails, and NV Champagne and fresh baby greens are complemented by a Sancerre or dry Riesling.

 

 

When in doubt the following wines tend to be very good choices to pair with vegetables: Champagne, Gruner Veltliner, Fino Sherry, Vin Jaune, Chenin Blanc, Riesling,

 

 

A note about Biodynamics: this farming method that came about in the 1920s from a series of lectures given by Austrian Rudolph Steiner is practiced in all aspects of farming, although the concept is in the spotlight in the wine industry just now.  Think of it as ‘extreme farming,’ in contrast to organics, which, though laudable in concept, leaves plenty of doubts as to integrity of practice, in actual practice.

 

While there is a fairly hazy line defining organics, the practice of Biodynamics is governed by a rather rigid set of rules, with both negative and positive definition: “you cannot use this,” as well as “you must to use this.” According to Biodynamics, phases of the moon, and the constellations, and different energies, also dictate leaf days, fruit days, and root days. This, in turn, decides what work will be done on what days. Seems superstitious? Two points brings the concept into perspective for the guests of The Inn at Dos Brisas:

A.     The fact that the moon’s pull raises and lowers the ocean. If it exerts this power on a body the size of the ocean, the effect it must have on delicate little vines is undeniable.

B.     Our farmer’s almanac has a very similar calendar, more or less based on the same concepts as the biodynamic calendar.

 

Biodynamics is not organics. Organic wine in the U.S. rules against the use of sulfur in winemaking, which is why the concept has never been a success; it is comparable to pitching organic hospitals in which sanitizer is not allowed.  Biodynamics allows certain amounts and types of sulfur to be used, and thus, quality is not compromised.

 

Most of the world’s best, most famous, and expensive wineries have fully converted to Biodynamics. These wines are more expressive of place (terroir) and are, quite simply, better.

 

All of the above recommendations are for biodynamic wines.