A Matter of Taste

Capital Time

Columns - Wine Press, 4 February 2009

A Feast and Vine "perfect pairing" wine and food tasting at Finc last week reminded how much fun it can be to focus on your taste buds for a while.The wine and food matching event kicked off without wine or food. Instead, the bustling café crowd was instructed to taste accompaniments - salt, sugar, lemon, pepper and black tea - in order to focus their minds on the essence of flavours.

Science tells us that taste is made up of primary characters - bitter, sour, sweet, salty and umami (savoury). Our experience of food and drink is also heavily influenced by aroma and texture, meaning there is plenty to think about when matching wine and food.

It was interesting to see how differently people mixed and matched the condiments that represented those primary flavours.

Wine is tart and fruity, so the lemon was a particularly relevant palate cleanser. Lemon lovers enjoyed the lemon with everything else, but the majority proved to be sensitive to acid and found their palate upset when the lemon was tasted with the tea (bitter) or pepper (bitter/savoury).

The effervescent hosts took great pains to assure us that personal preference is the only relevant test of whether a match is heavenly. If you like lemon, squeeze it on everything and acid balance be damned.

It started the evening on the right note. Preference is not science. After our "dry run" everyone was confident enough to talk about the flavours when the wine arrived.

Which brings me to Te Mania Rose 2008 ($18), a star of the tasting. This versatile wine matched well with pan-seared fish and lentil salad, carpaccio beef with oven-dried tomatoes, and also served as a fine aperitif.

This is an easy drinking rose with a touch of caramel on the nose and a ripe strawberry and tannin palate. Very nice indeed.

Also impressive with food was the Murdoch James Blue Rock Riesling 2007 ($28). It's a textural Riesling with a big acid presence behind lime and mineral flavours. For the lemon lovers, this was a real treat, and everyone appreciated the balance and "cut" when it was paired with a tartlet of red onion, rocket and goats cheese.

But my favourite wine of the evening was the one that didn't match so well with its dish. This is one of the odd things about wine and food matching - sometimes you simply like the wine and the match be damned.

Miro Summer Aphrodisiac ($18) certainly got my dander up. It's a non-vintage blend of mostly merlot and cabernet sauvignon with a bit of malbec and cabernet franc thrown in.

The result is a soft and full wine with a plummy aroma and a leather-and-spice complexity on the palate. A very good red that I had seconds of despite it not being the ideal match for the sweetbread in vine leaf it was served with. Great value, a good tannin presence, an all round winner.