Anatomy of a wine dinner, part 2

Wine dinners are usually focused on a particular winery or winemaker’s wines. The idea is to showcase the food of a chef or restaurant in conjunction with the wine in a series of pairings that join a course with a wine. As with any pairing endeavor, the goal is to bring these two elements together, and create an experience that either transcends the original, or takes one of the components to new heights.

The basis for the pairings of wine and food often grow from a conceptual foundation; there are “rules” of pairings that guide the decision as to the foods to prepare, that – when combined with the specifics of a particular wine – present a probable dish that can be created to achieve the desired results.

In many wine dinners, though, the chef doesn’t have access to the wine itself, but only to the winemaker or the winemaker’s notes, or (at the very least) the pairings that are usual for the wine. The logistics and costs involved in supplying wines are often difficult to overcome, and the chefs often lack the time (or inclination) to go through the exercise of deciding how to modify their dish to match the wine. Ultimately, it’s the dish that has to give in, and that’s not always an achievable result.

In the case of the Figge wine dinner, it was possible to sit with several tasters, try the proposed pairings, and make suggestions back to the kitchen as to what adjustments might “adjust” the food to the wine, without sacrificing the quality of the food or compromising the chef’s vision. We also had the option of several different iterations of the wines; same vintage, but different vineyards, to further tune the experience.

The proof, as they say, will be in the “pudding…”

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