Archive for the 'Food Pairing' Category

Enviable collection of Barolo at Belvedere restaurant in La Morra, Italy.

IS NEBBIOLO THE MOST SITE-SPECIFIC wine-grape variety in the world? It just might be. What other varietal wine is as hard to duplicate in other parts of its home country, let alone other parts of the world?

The challenge occurred to me last weekend when we hosted nine friends for a dinner party. I pulled together a mix of newly released northern Italian wines plus Italian-style wines made in California. How did they compare?

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It’s wise for a guy to have a good plan in advance of Valentine’s Day. I’ve learned this after too many Valentine’s Days when I tried to rush around San Francisco or New York at the last minute to find a gift of jewelry, chocolate or flowers. This year my gift is going to be a quiet, romantic dinner, where I spend a lot of time gazing into her hazel eyes, and not at the wine list.

Here’s what I’m thinking our evening will involve, at the table, that is. I just have to decide whether I’m buying the sushi and dessert as takeout and then cooking the quail, or if we’re dining out. What’s more romantic, anyway, cooking for your partner or dining out in style?

Sushi with Bubbly
Quail with Pinot Noir
Chocolate with Port

Ah, but why and what?

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It bugs me sometimes when I hear other wine writers and critics dissing California wine for being too big, too flavorful, too much. Disclosure: I live in Napa Valley, and I’ve lived about 40 percent of my life in California, so I do have an urge to support the home team.

The dissing sometimes strikes of condescension from people who learned about wine from a Eurocentric perspective and will never be able to acknowledge that a style different from the generally lean and underripe European profile could be desirable. So I defend the generally bigger style of West Coast wines, but I also like to point out that they make smaller wines here, too.

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Northern California has its own culinary specialties and traditions. It’s only been inhabited by non-natives for about 160 years, so the traditions don’t run as deep as the East Coast, and of course there’s no comparison to Europe or Asia, from where most of California’s current inhabitants or their forebears migrated.

Our family likes to put a couple of regional traditions on the table on Christmas eve. These are malfatti, an Italian dumpling that has been identified with Napa Valley for generations, and Dungeness crab salad, made from the large, native Pacific crustaceans harvested from the deep cold water outside the Golden Gate and from points north to at least Washington.
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