does anyone really want to taste a wine on a vegetable soup, artichokes or leeks vinaigrette, bell peppers raw, and a simple salad of lettuce or endive ? In principle, no. Almost instinctively, one feels that certain foods are not the best companions of our favourite wines and that it is therefore not possible to reason systematically in terms of food and wine pairings when we sit down at the table. This is true for the vegetables, especially green vegetables, and a good portion of vegetables that are eaten raw (the vegetables). They tend to speak in the language of a sommelier, to harden the tannins of the red wines that become astringent and dry the mouth and make out excessively, the character plant of the white wines. Everything depends in fact on the control of the bitterness, the flavor the more disturbing, this high-dose in some vegetables, such as salads wild, dandelion head, endives, and, more generally, with levels of intensity is very different, in many foods of plant origin, such as spices.
The problem of bitterness – unlike the other three flavors that are the salt, the sugar and the acidity, is that either you really like it (some love it), or you do not bear the slightest trace.
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It is possible, however, to limit the damage. Many dry white wines are produced from grape varieties to taste varietal labeled (the aromas and flavors unique to the grape and not attributable to the terroir, or wine, for example). This is the case of the sauvignon (except in the Centre-Loire valley where the minerality of the terroir dominates in the wines), the muscat is very present in the South and in the Alsace, a viognier, a great variety of small cru condrieu in the Rhone valley North, but also from gros manseng in the South-West. They can give dry wines with very aromatic, fruity, expressive, floral and plants, sometimes exuberant, that are not upset by the character plant vegetables. The asparagus served with an alsace muscat, for example, are part of the classic pairings taught in hotel schools.
A solution, especially in the summer : rosé. These are not wines only passe-partout. One finds among the rosé wines of many wine racks to accompany a real kitchen developed. These wines are the so-called “gourmet” are very suitable for asian cuisines, often salty, sugary, and, more generally, to the exotic flavors and sometimes found of spicy dishes, like paella or couscous. Some rosés, as rare as the originals, are vinified and aged in oak barrels. These wines develop in the fatty, aromatic palette made of soft spices and exotic fruits, and have a capacity of aging for a few years. The high quality rosé wines, for which is a matter of agreements with the plant-based ingredients that dry up and make it unpleasant tannins of red wines, is that they do not have or very little. They are very close to the structure of the white and offer aromas of red light and allow to cook on the theme of the plant without depriving yourself of toast.
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Jacques Dupont – Where and with whom drink wine ? The question of Candide #53 – Feel the wine, that is to take care of its memory
