The easiest part about being a sommelier who works in Europe is that pairings are pretty much a textbook exercise. Sure you can experiment, but it doesn?t take much to find what many would adjudge the ?perfect? match to a dish.
Shift the scene a few thousand kilometres east and things begin to get, shall we say, interesting. The cooking pot stirs up a range of new flavours and sommeliers often find themselves rather flummoxed at the idea of pairing wines. Convention appears to have little to do here and this becomes a time for a true wine professional to step out of his comfort zone and hang out on the wild side. Here is a small account of my two recent interactions: One with Japanese sake and the other with Bengali food. As always, I was trying to find all the permutations of pairing possible to keep things lively at the table.
Japanese food: This is one of the purest forms of food, pristine, unhindered, unchanged. So strong is the emphasis on being original and as close to source as possible that all pairings must keep in mind to never remotely mar the food experience. This is why sake (rice wine) works much better than regular (grape) wines. It manages to be sweet and fatty and yet with a crisp line that runs along the middle of the palate, thereby making for a combination that is truly ethereal. Sure you can have wines with Japanese food?champagne or similar sparkling wines, crisp Oz Rieslings and Sauvignon Blancs?wines that almost reflect the inherent nature and characteristics of sake. Recently, at a sake masterclass and paired dinner with the representative of the world-famous Kiku Masamune brand of sake, I was made to realise, course by course, how different sakes are used to accentuate various courses of a traditional Japanese meal.
Sake with other cuisines: So, for experiment sake, how about sake and Indian food? Or French? Or Italian? Well, to be honest, it?s nothing that I haven?t tried and, while some cuisines take well to it, some were a tad disappointing. French cuisine was a good match, the subtle spices (what spices?) sat well besides a crisp and crystal-pure Junmai Daiginjo-style sake. Seafood was the easiest to pair and it managed to pair easily with most versions. Trouble came with the richer plates (steaks, grilled meats) and here we crossed over to a Taru sake, one that is oak-aged, and it was again found to handle the meatiness quite well. All these sakes are available in India as well, so if you happen to own a restaurant that is not Japanese, consider this a go-ahead wave to try and incorporate some sake on your list.
Bengali food: My recent jaunts took me to the land of the Indian French, the Bengalis. No population, I find, shows a similar level of astuteness or is more pernickety than them when it comes to what you eat. The cuisine of the state is royal and complex yet simple and straightforward. The dishes cover a range of flavours but the focus in each is very precise. The flavours can be strong to the point of being pungent and, just for good measure, a little sweet-savoury yin-yang is also thrown in. All this complicates the idea of pairing and one person may never be able to draw up a definite conclusion. So I locked myself in a room with a dozen or so professionals and had the chefs throw some good local grub our way. I had lined up a series of wines and soon we would know just what it takes to harness a Bekti Paturi. White wines seemed to do a better job of taming most dishes, from the fish to the prawns. With the meats (Kosha Maangsho) it was an undisputed rich red Shiraz that won popular vote but an aged chardonnay with oaky-richness and creaky layers also showed some promise (in retrospect now, wish I had had some sake too).
The lesson today is this?with food and wines, everything is possible. There are no rules really and if you like it, there is a guaranteed number out there who will agree with you even as an equal number oppose you. Don?t let them get to you; the idea of food and wine is to always be on the lookout for new ideas, no matter how silly they sound at first. Remember, people initially didn?t approve of bubbles in champagne, they laughed at the first winemakers in Australia, and nobody thought much of Indian food till a decade ago. The trick is to keep exploring. Bon voyage, then?
The writer is a sommelier
