Winophilia

For a decadent (i.e., buttery) preparation of lobster, langoustine or crab, what wine from your list would you recommend as a complementary pairing, and what wine would you recommend as a contrasting pairing? And for each recommendation, please explain your reasoning—i.e., what are the principles at work, and why should the combination prove satisfying?

Steven Grubbs, Wine Director, Five and Ten Restaurant (Athens, GA), Empire State South (Atlanta, GA). I’m going to go with two very different wines, both made from the same grape, grown less than a hundred miles apart.

The easier pairing is always the complementary one. You don’t run the risk of blowing it in quite such an obvious way. The idea here is you match like flavors with like. So if you’re eating something slightly sweet (like lobster) that’s bathed in clarified butter, you’ll choose a wine that shares similar traits.For this pairing I’m choosing Vincent Girardin’s 2006 Meursault Les Narvaux, from Burgundy. This wine is fairly dry but it does have some ripe fruit, which goes in the direction of the lobster’s sweet meat. It has been treated to some spicy oak and—here’s the key—a pretty hearty dose of malolactic fermentation (the process whereby malic acid, which reminds one of apples, is transformed into lactic acid, which reminds one of butter or cream), as well as some time on the rich lees (the wine’s yeasty sediment). All that richness is not overwrought, however, and the wine still retains some nice minerality and earthy aromatics, which should catch those saline shell smells of the sea creature, too.

The contrasting pair is a neat little trick (think chocolate with pretzels), and I’ll admit I’m going slightly conservative here in order to show the differences in chardonnays from Burgundy (I was tempted to pair a floral gewürztraminer from Alto-Adige’s J. Hofstätter, but I’m sticking to my thematic guns). If Meursault is a source for Burgundy’s more opulent whites, then the medium-bodied everyday drinkers come from a number of towns in the Mâconnais to the south. Some of them exhibit very nice high-toned lemon fruit and acidity, and a great example is young Alain Normand’s 2008 Mâcon La Roche-Vineuse. Normand’s wine is done entirely in vat, which means it doesn’t see air exchange (as opposed to what you get with oak). This makes its flavors spiky and fresh, whereas oak will let the flavors lay out a bit (not to mention also imparting various vanilla and spice notes). So the Normand’s bracing acidity and high, Chablis-like stone aromatics act the way lemon does on that lobster, cutting through the fat and giving your mouth a little relief from the buttery onslaught. It’s still chardonnay, however, so the fruit tones aren’t getting too far afield (you probably wouldn’t want a juicy sauvignon blanc, like one from New Zealand—too much red grapefruit and gooseberry). You want lemon and stone fruits. Green apple is alright, too.

So you see how tricky pairing can be. Even when you have two wines of the same grape from the same part of the world they can spark completely different reactions, depending on how and where they were made. Don’t let this intimidate you, though. Just use your noggin and your healthy human instincts. They’re usually correct.

Michael Kwas, Wine Director, L’Etoile Restaurant (Madison, WI). For a complementary pairing, I would recommend a weighty pinot blanc from Austria. My favorite cuvée right now is Ludwig Hiedler’s 2008 Weissburgunder “Maximum,” which hails from Kamptal in Austria. There’s a lot of gras [i.e, fat] to this wine, which adds another layer of richness to the lobster dish, like a savory parfait. In addition to its textural affinity with lobster and butter, it also has a lovely scallopy aroma which the wine carries through on the palate (Austrian pinot blanc often has a shellfish-shell aroma, but it’s less common as a flavor component), yielding another octave of flavor. One cannot have too much umami in my opinion.

For a contrasting pairing, I recommend Eric Chevalier’s Fie Gris from the far eastern edge of the Loire Valley. Believed to be a distant cousin of sauvignon blanc, it shares sauvignon’s  acidity, which provides balance to the richness of the lobster and butter. The contrast I like best, however, derives from the wine’s intense herbaceousness. Many are quick to dismiss Fie Gris as smelling overly of green pepper, but the wine is much more complex than that, suggesting herbaceous flowers belonging to the asteraceae family, such as thistles. Herbs are a natural match for butter: think of all the variations of herb compound butter. It’s also a delightful, assertive contrast to lobster, working in much the same way that tarragon does. While technically a complementary flavor, I must add that there’s also a mineral edge to the wine which sings with the lobster.

Gus Vahlkamp, Sommelier, The Slanted Door (San Francisco). Raj Parr brought with him upon his most recent visit to The Slanted Door a 1988 Ramonet Chassagne-Montrachet Les Ruchottes, a magnificent wine whose elegance and astounding power would make a fine escort for classically prepared lobster or crab. But since that bottle isn’t on our list and sadly never will be, I’ve chosen a couple of wines from the list at Out the Door on Bush Street.

For a complementary crustacean companion, I like the brand-new 2009 Scholium Project Rhododactylos, a bianco di malvasia nera made from an old vineyard out in Lodi. Initially conceived as a rosé, the brief maceration didn’t take, and the wine finished with just the faintest glimmer of copper at the meniscus (its tartrates, however, are hot pink). Rhododactylos may represent a bit of a departure for Abe Schoener and his crew, in that it features a lower degree of alcohol (12.5%) than what is usual for Scholium, but it maintains the richness of mid-palate and high acidity that make his wines surprisingly food-worthy. I’ve drunk it often and briskly recently with our own Dungeness crab dish (which has noodles, garlic and scallions, so it isn’t traditional) and found its ripe fruit, broad palate, and tiny speck of tannin to be a fine match.

Were I to find a contrasting recommendation, one whose acidity would minimize the buttery, briny decadence of a continental crustacean course (where a wine like Rhododactylos would amplify it), I’d look no further than a dry German wine, particularly the 2003 Müller-Catoir Haardter Bürgergarten Muskateller Spätlese Trocken.  Quite a mouthful to say, even more to taste. Teutonic wines from 2003 can be sketchy, but I stand behind all of the dry Catoir wines from the vintage; this one is big (14%), but the firmness of its delivery is resolute. Given the ripeness of the vintage, I was surprised at its aromatic tanginess; I had expected something headier and frankly more slatternly. In this case, I think it would be perfect with lobster or crab, since it carries a big enough stick across the palate and packs enough acid to rinse away all that buttery sea meat, just in time for another bite. So, for an interesting contrasting match: musky, muscular muscat! I had to say that….