Natalie MacLean is a food and wine expert and an all-around good writer. When I have questions about what to drink with a meal, or what’s new on the wine horizon, I usually go to her website. There’s so much information crammed into one site that it’s almost overwhelming. One of the cooler features of the site is her “Drinks Matcher” tool. You choose a food or choose a wine and the matcher will tell you what, well, matches. The level of detail is surprising – Nat includes more than just a few standard meals and a wide variety of […]
Food & Wine Pairing
Food & Wine 7
Right now, hanging out on my wine rack, I have a bottle of 2007 Syncline Mourvedre from the Coyote Canyon Vineyard in Horse Heaven Hills, and it’s just begging to be opened. I loved last year’s vintage, so I can’t wait to get at the newest. At the recommendation of Peter Moore from Poco Wine Room, though, it’s going to get even better if I give it a month to open up a bit (it’s still just a baby), so I’ve been sitting on it for about three weeks, going crazy all the while. With all this anticipation, maybe I […]
Ethiopian Fare & Wine
Ethiopians have for centuries made a honey wine known as tej. You can sometimes find this mead-like beverage for sale at some Ethiopian restaurants. Or, you could try a mead made domestically. For most diners looking for that Ethiopian meal out at a restaurant or for takeout, the drink of choice most likely will be beer or a grape-based wine. The question is: What sort of wine to pour with Ethiopia’s highly seasoned meat and vegetable dishes, most of which are served on rounds of injera, the tart Ethiopian flat bread made from teff flour. Tom Benezra of Sal’s Beverage […]
Green Food & Wine
10 Green Food & Drink Matches for St. Patrick’s Day at NatalieMacLean.com You don’t need the luck o’ the Irish to find great green food and drink pairings this St. Patrick’s Day, according to Natalie MacLean, who offers a new Drinks Matcher widget. “Just look for complementary flavors and textures.” “Green food and green wine go together, so veggies dance with wines that have herbal, grassy aromas, such as New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc,” Natalie adds. “In fact, if there were an award for Veggie Wine of the Century, it would go to this one. Not only does it have complementary […]
Poutine & Wine
Much thought is given to pairing wines with gourmet dishes or the choicest selections of meat, fish, and poultry. But what about more plebian fare like fries and gravy? As I headed out of town last week, sommelier and wine writer Natalie MacLean (www.nataliemaclean.com) asked for my ideas on the best wine to pair with the Quebec specialty known as poutine. Poutine is the name given north of the border to a concoction of French fries, brown gravy, and melted cheese. Of course, back home in New Jersey, we have our own name for this artery-clogging treat: disco fries, that […]
Chocolate & Wine 1
If a box of chocolates is your gift choice for that someone special this Valentine’s Day, put some adventure into it and pair it with a bottle of wine. Just be the sure it’s the right wine. “Ideally you should choose a wine that is sweeter than the chocolate,” says Natalie MacLean of Ottawa, an accredited sommelier, wine writer, speaker and judge. “Otherwise the wine will taste bitter by comparison.” She says that no matter what kind of chocolate you’ve got, there is also richness which comes from high alcohol. MacLean suggests taking a piece of dark chocolate which is […]
Chocolate & Wine 4
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 […]
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. […]
