It’s fun to pair drinks with music – but it’s also a vivid way to communicate a wine’s character
Domaine Alain Chavy Les Chenes 2011 is a rather good, oak-influenced dry white from one of France’s most celebrated regions, Chassagne-Montrachet in Burgundy. According to Oddbins, , its “elegant palate of crisp citrus, white flower, hints of honey and stony minerality” would make a fine match for “seared scallops with tarragon butter”. To make the combination really soar, Oddbins’ website makes another proposition: why not try serving Les Chenes and the scallops with a blast of Simple Minds’ bombastic 1980s pop-rock anthem Don’t You (Forget About Me)?
What makes the track work with this particular wine isn’t explained. Does it have some specific quality, a certain tinny-ness of synthesizer, or a windy earnestness of vocal, that suits the chardonnays of Chassagne-Montrachet? Or had the Oddbins copywriter run out of ideas, exhausted after finding musical matches for each of the hundreds of wines on the website, from Paul Simon’s Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes for a dense Puglian Primitivo to anything by Elgar for Pol Roger champagne?
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