Wine Currents
December 2004

WINE CURRENTS WITH THE CIA

A FOCUS ON SAUCES: ENSURING A HARMONIOUS PAIRING

Sauces are often intensely flavored and rich in texture and so become an important consideration in matching food and wine. Traditional sauces are high in fat, and frequently they are the main taste element in a complex dish. If a poached fish is served with a meunière or hollandaise sauce, the richest part of the dish is found in the sauce. If a filet mignon is covered with a béarnaise sauce, the richness of the sauce de-emphasizes the flavor of a cut of meat that is not densely marbled with internal fat.

Sauces based on butter, cream, and other dairy fats tend to dominate the flavors of many protein-based dishes. In choosing a wine to marry with a richly sauced dish, we might very well choose the flavors in the sauce as dominant and match the wine with those flavors.

Increasingly, restaurant patrons are electing to enjoy sauces and other rich accompaniments “on the side,” in order to consume fewer calories from fat and also to taste the food relatively unadorned and unmasked. In addition, the nature of sauces is changing. A grilled salmon that in the past might have been served with a butter sauce now may be served with a spicy fruit or vegetable salsa. A poached salmon might be served in its poaching liquid of wine and herbs. Meats might just as easily be served with sauces based on vegetable juices nd purées, or a lentil ragoût, as with a full-flavored brown sauce.

Grilled or steamed vegetables, or rice and pasta, once thought to be side dishes, now occupy the center of the plate and the center of the palate. Clearly, the wines chosen to match such contemporary cuisine will be quite different from those chosen to marry with rich sauces.

We use the example of sauces and their changing nature to emphasize that choosing wines for certain dishes is most often dependent on the dominant flavors of those dishes. Sauces can be dominant, but so can meat, fish, poultry, vegetables or grains. Even a garnish – fresh horseradish, for example – can be the dominant flavor in a delicate, lighter dish, such as a classic shrimp cocktail.

If you are selecting wines to accompany food, you have to know what the food tastes like, and unless you are trying to show off the wines at the expense of the food, you will most often match the wine to the food, not the food to the wine. Certainly entire dinners can – and do – revolve around particular wines and their food affinities, but in most cases, wine should be seen as part of a harmonious whole – another flavor element in a successful meal.