Tag Archives: Pinot Grigio

What wine with salad?

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It is summer time here in Sydney and that requires cooler food.  We have been making a lot of salads recently to address that.  We have also been watching our weight and trying to eat better, so a good salad helps with that also.

But what type of wine to match with salads?  I have books and experience matching wines with different types of meats, cheeses, and chocolates, but not with salads.  With the number of salads we have had over the last few weeks, I have been considering this more and wanted to share some initial thoughts with you.  My single most important rule is that any good wine and any good salad will do!  Matching salads and vegetables with other foods is pretty easy and it is not often that you have a major conflict.  I think the same can be said for wine and salads.

However, to improve on the “any good salad, any good wine will do” approach, I would try to determine if there is a main or over-riding ingredient or dominant taste in the salad.  If a particular taste or flavor is going to be dominant in the food, that would be a good starting point for selecting the wine.

Another concept I go for is that salads are most often made with fresh produce and therefore I go for a wine with some freshness and crispness to it.  A wine that works well with meaty / gamey foods would not – as a general rule – be good with a salad unless the salad had large slices of grilled lamb or something similar meat.  In general and if you have no other guidance, then go with a white wine, preferably a crisp one.

For example, tonight we are are having a bean and feta salad.  The beans are slightly cooked, but still quite crisp.  The feta has a touch of sharpness to it.  It also contained tomatoes, Spanish onion, and some spices.  Therefore, I have pulled out a medium aged Riesling (a 2007 Annies Lane from Clare Valley) to go with it as I expect a bit of the remaining acid in the wine to stand up well with the crispness of many of the ingredients in the salad.  In general, I would consider three types of white wines which should go well with salads:

  • Riesling:  for a salad with crisp ingredients, sharper cheeses, apple chunks, spices
  • Pinot Gris: with walnuts or figs as part of the salad, or more citrus fruit bits
  • Semillon or Sauvignon Blanc (or blend): should work well with almost any salad, especially if it has chunks of smoked salmon, seared tuna, scallops, lobster, or other fish or crustaceans

Chardonnay: will not work as well as the other three whites mentioned above unless the salad contains large chunks of chicken and is fairly bland overall.  And if salad is the only thing I am going to eat as a meal, then I usually am going to have one with some stronger flavors and spices.

If you plan on putting some grilled or stir-fried red meat into the salad, you can start to think about a red wine.  In general, salads should be ‘light,’ so something like a Pinot Noir or a Zinfandel could work.  If the meat is heavier and spicier, then a Shiraz should work also.

If you plan on making the salad the main or only course like we have been doing this summer, then it is also a cause for more celebration and a Sparkling Shiraz or a Frizante could work well also.  Both the salad and the wine are full of crispness and freshness then!

This is still an area I am finding out more about and hope to have a more complete and rigorous set of salad / wine matchings in the future.  We just got a couple of great salad cookbooks and will be trying a number of new salads over the coming weeks, experimenting with different wines, and coming back with more suggestions for you in the near future!  And if you have any good ideas or experiences where you have had a good pairing of a wine with a salad, please let me know.

BTW, my friend Blake Stevens posted an article today on home-made fresh summer foods and the concept of a ‘fridge’ salad.  Read the post and let me know what wine, if any, you would consider matching with the ‘fridge’ salad!

What a weekend hoot discussing party wines on Food in Focus

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We have had so much going on the last few weeks, both work-wise and personally, it seemed we did not get an evening together at home for several weeks.  This meant I was tired going into my 60th birthday party weekend.  Fortunately, surrounded by great friends, great food and great wine, I was able to pick myself up to make it through the weekend.  And even more fortunately, I had some leftover 2006 Penfolds Yatarnna and some 2005 Chateau Haut Bergeron which I am drinking now while blogging!

With friends from the US and Melbourne in town, we had five of us for a fabulous meal at Fish on the Rocks with great matching wines Friday evening. And then the bigger affair with 11 of us on Saturday evening with an outstanding wine and food line-up cooked by Jay Huxley, Masterchef finalist and his crew.  But first I want to discuss the fun I had participating in Food in Focus radio show Saturday afternoon.  This is a regular Saturday feature at 4 pm which Natascha Moy has been hosting for four and a half years now on FM 89.7 radio.

We had great fun.  Natascha always has three guests from various aspects of the food and wine industry.  I was privileged to be on the show with Lisa Margan, owner and proprietor of Margan Estates in Broke in the Hunter Valley, and with Nick Wills, owner and Brad Sloane, the chef of The Riverview Hotel at 29 Birchgrove Road in Balmain, NSW.

I have been to Margans several times and have some of their great 2003 White Label Shiraz and their 2006 Barbera in my cellar.  It is a beautiful setting for doing a tasting, having a meal, or even for getting married!  I have not been to the The Riverview Hotel, but will definitely try it now that I have sampled some of these guys food!  And if I remember correctly, they do a very nice pizza for $20 and on Tuesday, you can get two for $20!

I was the ‘wild card’ wine guy for the show.  I brought along three bottles of wines as representative party wines.  The wines I brought were the 2010 Vavasour Pinot Gris from New Zealand, the 2009 Tyrrell’s Verdelho, and the 2005 Kelman Shiraz, both from the Hunter Valley.  The winning wine among the guests was the first one we opened and tasted, which was the 2010 Vavasour Pinot Gris.  It had a very smooth texture, and mandarin and a bit of grapefruit flavorings.  And everyone really seemed to enjoy a New Zealand white wine which was not a Sauvignon Blanc!

So what did I have to say about party wine?  It can be summarized as follows:

  • You don’t need to spend more than $20 per bottle for party wines and you can still impress.  All three bottles I brought along were between $12 – $18.
  • Don’t bring Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc as everyone else is bringing those, so bring something else to provide some choice.
  • Parties can get warm if there are a lot of people or if outside, so if you are only bringing one bottle, make it a white wine.
  • Good white party wines can be Pinot Gris or Verdelho which are easy and enjoyable to drink on their own and go with canapes, dim sum, etc.  A Marsanne would not go as well or be appreciated by a wide variety of people.  A Semillon or Gewürztraminer would be ok, but not have the wide-spread appeal that a Pinot Gris or Verdelho would on its own.
  • If you are bringing a red wine, try a secondary grape to treat people to something different.  A Barbera, Tempranillo, or Sangiovese is different and easy to drink.
  • Or bring something unusual or a bit more personal.  That is the reason I brought along the Kelman Shiraz, as it can only be bought at the cellar door, and it is associated with the winery where I have a place to live.
  • Don’t bring a bottle of wine if you do not know how it will taste or are trying to recycle a bottle received from someone else!

I really enjoyed previously listening to Food in Focus and now have really enjoyed being part of the show.  Each week has different topics and guests and is a continual learning experience for anyone interested in food or wine!  Check it out

Wine with Risotto

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One of the things I love about risottos is that (like curries) there are so many different ways to make and flavor risotto.  My wife also has a method for making risotto now using the Thermomix, that produces a great risotto in 20 minutes instead of the hour it was taking before, using more traditional methods.

While this is not a blog on making risotto, I am going to take a minute to cover off making risotto the traditional way versus using the Thermomix as I did not believe risotto made in a Thermomix could be nearly as good, but it is.  It did take her several trials to get it right in terms of exact timing and amount of ingredients to put in and some risottos work better in the Thermomix than others.  However, for the working couple who does not have the time upon returning home from work later in the evening, using the Thermomix to prepare a mid-week risotto meal is a real treat!

You can look to my bride’s blog “DAZ in the Kitchen” to find out more on her risotto recipes and making them the traditional way and with the Thermomix.  Now back to the question of “which wine goes best with which risotto?”

One of the basic principles I try to follow when selecting a wine to go with food is to ensure that the wine and food are “in balance.”

What does this mean?  For me, it means that neither the food nor the wine overpowers the other nor minimizes the other’s role in the meal.  If food is smooth or creamy, then the wine (usually) should be also; if the food is more gritty (like lasagna), then the wine should be more gritty (have more tannins, be unfiltered, etc.) like the 2006 St Peter’s Shiraz I recently had with a good meat lasagna;  if the food is complex with many ingredients, the wine should be complex (usually this means more time in the bottle); if the wine has some sharp tastes (sometimes with fish or seafood for example), then the wine should have a bit of an edge to it also.  There are entire books written on this subject, but hopefully you get the idea.

Risotto becomes creamier in texture as it is cooked and creates a bit of sauce to go with it.  We often make a chicken and mushroom risotto using white chicken meat and button mushrooms.  I have found that a medium-bodied Chardonnay goes well with it.  I would recommend something like the 2009 or 2011 Two Rivers Reserve Chardonnay.  While there are certainly many different Chardonnays in this category that would work, the Two Rivers is simply one of the very best Chardonnays you can get for the money.  I would recommend it over all others for this type of risotto.

But if the risotto is made with a combination of white and dark chicken meat or dark meat only and you are using multiple types of mushrooms, such as portabella and shiitake, or you are mixing in a bit of truffle oil, then I would use a more aged and complex Chardonnay.  Chardonnays in this league would include the Penfold’s Yattarna, the 2000 Waverly Estate Chardonnay, or even a Puligny or Chassagne Montrachet.  But note these wines are three to ten time more expensive than the Two Rivers, which would still go very nicely with a more complex chicken and mushroom risotto!

Last night I tried the 2009 Pepper Tree Pinot Gris with the chicken and mushroom risotto and it did not match as well as the Chardonnays I have had with the dish previously, but I believe it was the particular Pinot Gris.  I think a true Italian Pinot Gris such as the 2010 Jermann (which is a far better Pinot Grigio on its own!) would have matched beautifully as it is a bit smoother, yet much more intense and flavorful than the Pepper Tree.

However, the Pepper Tree, being a bit more bland and metallic, would have gone very nicely with a (non-spicy) pumpkin risotto, which is something I plan to verify the next time we make a pumpkin risotto.

My bride also makes a magnificent prawn and gorgonzola cheese risotto, with both the prawn and cheese bringing out a more metallic and sharper taste than the chicken and mushroom risotto.  Therefore, I match up a nice Riesling with that risotto.  I would recommend the 2009 Hugel Alsace Riesling or any good Riesling from the Clare or Eden Valley in South Australia.  There are so many good Rieslings in the $15 – $30 range that would go well with the prawn and gorgonzola risotto.

The important thing again is “balance”.  Had I matched the Riesling with the chicken and mushroom risotto, the Riesling would have overwhelmed the risotto and had I matched the Chardonnay with the prawn and gorgonzola risotta, the wine would have been overpowered by the food.

When eating and drinking wine, if either the food or wine is dominant, then you have made a poor choice in the matching, but if both are in balance and blending nicely together, then you have made good choice.  And if they are competing back and forth without either one winning, then you have made the perfect choice!

What wine with Pizza?

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This is always a tough question since there are so many different ingredients that can go into pizza.  We have gone from buying pizza to making our own, which is quite easy and allows us to create exactly the taste we want.  It also means we have a healthier pizza.  Some times we make the base and other times we buy it, but that choice has no effect on our choice of wine.

We alway use a tomato sauce / paste to cover the base, and almost always a spicier sausage such as pepperoni or the spicy home-made Italian sausage our great friend, Ric and his family make annually (so glad to have a private stash of that sausage – it is magnificent for a pizza topping!).  We also tend to put a lot of garlic and chili on our pizza.  Therefore, a Hunter Valley (spicy, pepper flavored) Shiraz is always a good choice.  However, something a little lighter such as a Cabernet Sauvignon or a Italian Chianti (made from the Sangiovese grape) is always a safe choice to bring out the flavors of the pizza.

Interestingly enough, some white wines will also go well with pizza, since a number of white wines match well with the various cheeses used.  And if you are using chicken, pineapple, or something similar for toppings, a white becomes even a better choice.  I would recommend a crisp (2 or 3 years in the bottle, before it smooths in taste and texture) Semillon to match up well with cheese, but overall believe a Gewürztraminer, or Riesling would be best.  If it is plainer tasting pizza, a Pinot Grigio would be good.  A Gewürztraminer works well with a lot of different spices such as with Indian food or Thai food, so it will work well with a well seasoned pizza also!

It is rare that I would recommend seven different types of grapes as being a good match for a food, but that says a lot about the diversity of pizza!  Then there is always Merlot, but I rarely drink Merlot if given almost any other choice.

And if this is all too difficult, then grab a beer or two!  But overall, it is usually a Shiraz or a Chianti for me.  The only question is – “which one”?

BTW, I am making the pizza tonight and Deanna, who writes the blog, DAZ in the Kitchen, will be creating a post soon with the pizza recipe we use.