PERFECT MATCH Want to seduce someone this Valentine’s Day? Just share a glass of wine (or three) with your sweetheart. Wine is liquid sensuality: its heady bouquet stimulates the appetite and its velvet caress soothes that desire. What other drink is described as both voluptuous and muscular? And when you pair wine with the mouth-coating luxury of chocolate, the combination is impossible to resist. We asked Natalie Maclean, author of Red, White and Drunk All Over and the woman behind the food-wine matcher at www.nataliemaclean.com, to give us her romantic suggestions of chocolate pairings with California wines. Here’s her top […]
Food & Wine Pairing
Terrific Turkey Wines that will Make Your Holiday Meal More Festive – The Province
When hosting a holiday meal, the wines you serve are just as important as the food when it comes to making a sparkling impression with guests. From beginning to end, pairing the best wines with appetizers, the main course and dessert will not only show your guests you care enough to make the effort but will also give them an unforgettable experience this holiday season. Start the night off with a toast of bubbly to celebrate the occasion and the New Year to come. “Champagne is a very festive wine,” says Jennifer McLagan, an Australian-trained chef and author of Fat: […]
Matching Online
Can you suggest wine-pairing Web sites? — Robert B. Moberly Fayetteville, Ark. There are thousands of opinions on what food should be served with what wine. Keep in mind that any pairing is a highly personal suggestion and that the most important pairing advice is that if it tastes good to you, then it’s a good match. We prefer to use books for quick reference, but there are some good Web sites that you should bookmark, too. Wine writer Natalie MacLean keeps a nice database of pairings on her Web site, http://nataliemaclean.com/matcher.
Turkey Wines 7
As much as we anticipate pairing wine with our Thanksgiving feast, let us not forget: that bird at center-stage is akin to winged tofu. Dry, winged tofu. Doesn’t exactly tickle your wine fancy? Not to worry. When selecting a wine for the festive meal, it’s not the turkey you’re pairing to anyway. Rather, it’s everything that touches the turkey on your plate: a sea of savory, sweet, creamy and crunchy side dishes that are the true stars of the holiday. For this reason, spry, fruity wines with little age and decent acidity are the best for turkey and its fixings. […]
Clam Chowder & Wine
Whether your idea of clam chowder is Boston’s bowl of creamy goodness, Manhattan’s tomatoey brine or Connecticut’s vibrant clear broth, team this classic dish with a glass of chilled white wine. A white wine will give you the refreshing crispness to stand up to the full-throttled clam flavor, while a sense of fruitiness—a touch of sweetness, even—will flatter the chowder’s innate saltiness. The one variable that may change is the wine’s weight or profile, as noted by Natalie Maclean, the Canadian wine writer who offers food and wine pairing suggestions on her Web site, nataliemaclean.com. “Clam chowders in a clear […]
Picnic Wines
September brings us the last days of summer and the year’s final opportunity for sun-drenched picnics. But how do we choose a suitable wine to ease us out of fancy-free summer and into the formality of fall? Why not go regional or, at least, Canadian? You’ll cut down on the greenhouse gas emissions required to transport the wine, and you’ll support our growers and producers. Local Pairings “Three of my favourite picnic wines are Niagara Rieslings from Henry of Pelham, Strewn, and Vineland Estates,” says Ottawa wine expert Natalie MacLean, author of Red, White, and Drunk All Over and a […]
Doughnuts & Wine
That ever-puzzling question of what wine to drink with a chocolate doughnut or two is settled at www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher, where you will find an easy-to-use tool that pairs wines with just about any dish from chicken-feta tostadas to Jell-O. At this award-winning site you also can sign up for Nat Decants, sommelier Natalie MacLean’s free monthly newsletter. And you can access her basic-level wine glossary. But to end the suspense – and tossing coffee aside – the beverage for chocolate doughnuts is either a Banyuls, which is a fortified wine from southern France, or a tawny port. Natalie MacLean is author […]
Chicken Wings & Wine
Chicken wings, no matter how they’re prepared, are among the simplest but memorable pleasures of life. Be sure to mark the occasion with a glass of wine. Wine? Well, yes. Beer may be the traditional choice for wings, especially those sauced up in classic Buffalo style. With a little bit of experimentation, though, you can find just the right wine for whatever type of wings you are serving—even the honey barbecue wings used in Good Eating’s tasting. Natalie MacLean, author of “Red, White and Drunk All Over,” recommends an off-dry riesling or a fruity merlot with honey barbecue wings. “The […]
Fast Food & Wine
A bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken suits Natalie MacLean just fine, thank you. It creates a challenge to do what she does best — pairing wines with food. This internationally renowned wine aficionado and expert admits without abashment that she can’t cook. “But I’ve learned how to compensate for my lack of cooking skills by matching wines with every kind of meal, including fast food,” says MacLean. She and her family indulge in all sorts of ready prepared foods from dining out, takeout, TV dinners and deli stuff to canned beans and “even our son’s mac and cheese, which by […]
Barbecue Wines
“It was a warm, breezy July evening and we were with good friends whom we’ve known for 15 years. It was an informal get-together and I love those because we can bring wine. “We started with gourmet potato chips while the grill was heating up, and we opened a bottle of bubbly from Spain. I loved the shabby-chic combination, and with the salt and fat of the chips it was amazingly good. “They did cedar-planked grilled salmon. I was able to be a wine renegade and match it with a red wine. Salmon, when it’s grilled, takes on those beautiful […]
