The rise of new cuisines, whether Asian or Scandinavian, has led to a search for wines to match them
Sometimes a wine and food match is so harmonious it makes you wonder which part of the combination came first. When I sip a cool and grassy sancerre with a creamy, slightly gamey chavignol goat’s cheese, the flavours and textures interweave in such a complementary way, it’s hard to believe the match was simply stumbled upon. It’s easier to imagine that, after years of experimentation in some rickety shack in the Loire Valley, a gifted farmer came up with this style of sauvignon blanc purely to match it with the local cheese, or vice-versa.
Of course, there’s no single mad organoleptic genius behind any pairing – and no history book to answer the chicken-or-egg problem of which half of the combination came first. That this match works so well does, however, have rather a lot to do with the dish and the wine developing in tandem in the same region. It’s not for nothing that the most useful piece of pairing advice is the adage: what grows together, goes together.
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