Winophilia

The Wine:

2008 Paul Lato Chardonnay “Le Souvenir”  Sierra Madre Vineyard Santa Maria Valley($50). A beautifully balanced, medium-bodied wine, with a creamy-rich texture and layers of flavors ranging from stone fruits to vanilla, spice and butterscotch. On the finish, a mineral component reminiscent of Chablis adds complexity and elegance.

The Dish:

Grilled Halibut with Peach/Cilantro Salsa and Saffron Rice. This flaky, meaty, whitefleshed fish was subtly flavored with hints of smoke from the grill and lay on a bed of fragrant saffron rice. Topping the fish was a mildly sweet, fruity salsa that also had a moderate measure of heat from cayenne pepper punctuated with herbal cilantro.

Fruit and dry wine often challenge our palates. The sugar in fruit can cause a perfectly beautiful dry wine to taste bitter by comparison. That’s why I can’t understand the current rage among so many otherwise sane and talented chefs to spike so many dishes on their menus with fruit or other sweet things. Figs, strawberries, raisins and honey come to mind from a recent dinner at a well known restaurant here in Napa Valley. I studiously avoided all dishes with sweet stuff that evening and wondered if the chef ever enjoyed a glass of dry wine with dinner himself.

So when my wife, Jodie, announced that she wanted to prepare halibut with a spicy peach/cilantro salsa to serve our visiting friend, the Central Coast winemaker Paul Lato, I had my doubts. You see, I wanted to show off my own new (dry) Covenant Chardonnay to Paul in the best light, and this didn’t seem like an ideal match. But Jodie convinced me that our wine had enough richness and bright acidity to stand up the sweet and the spice. I agreed to the plan.

What I didn’t count on was Paul bringing over his own new chardonnay for us to try. He was hungry and thirsty, too, after an afternoon of kayaking down the Russian River.  I suppose we could have drunk both chardonnays. But we had a lot of other wines to enjoy that night, and I decided to politely serve Paul’s wine instead of ours for the white wine course. Fortunately, his chardonnay had enough character and acidity to carry the day. The stone fruit flavors in the wine blended beautifully with the peach salsa. The chardonnay’s vanilla and spice were complementary to the saffron and spice served with the fish. And the mineral edge on the wine’s finish added a freshness that cleansed our palates and inspired us to enjoy another forkful of food.

Obviously there is no one “best” wine to pair with any dish.  Style is what counts the most.  As a rule, similarly styled wines and foods pair well in a complementary manner.  For example, lighter foods go with lighter-styled wines—as in seafood and white wine. This is a bit simplistic, of course. But it’s a good place to start. Bright acidity in a wine typically provides the lift that gives a wine a lighter profile. And higher acidity, such as that found in many fine white wines, will also stand up to salad vinaigrettes or the spiciness that comes from chili peppers, for instance.

Acidity can provide a contrasting stylistic note as well. Sweet fruit (as in our peach salsa) was tempered by the bright acidity in the Paul Lato chardonnay. But a sweeter riesling (with good acidity) might also have made a fine match here as a combination of complementary (sweet and sweet) and contrasting (sweet and acidic) pairings.

If you can define the style of your wine options, there’s no limit to the potential for great dining. And if you think that your friends’ wines fit the desired style of the evening, don’t hesitate to open their offering. It’s a question of good taste….and manners.

Author and winemaker Jeff Morgan’s food and wine articles have appeared in many major publications throughout America. He lives in Napa Valley, where he makes Covenant wines and also writes cookbooks.