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Would you like fries with that? Wine pairings aren’t limited to gourmet fare
• by By Glenn Bardgett • Photo by Josh Monken
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On my first visit to France in 1981, I was walking in Paris on my final day before returning home. As I strolled along the Champs Elysées my attention was drawn to the internationally familiar golden arches of McDonald’s, and my two weeks of stellar dining and supreme wining were completed with a simple Big Mac attack.
Along with the menu was a list, although short, of simple wines in small bottles to accompany my burger. The dilemma was not whether to have wine but whether the special sauce on a Big Mac was different in France, making my wine choice more difficult. Obviously I was overthinking this issue. Sitting along the sidewalk with my miniature bottle of some sort of red from somewhere in France and a reasonably familiar Big Mac and fries is a perfect memory.
The idea of pairing wine and junk food may sound strange to American ears; we tend to think of beer as the beverage to accompany our everyday foods. But there’s no rule that says wine must be saved for gourmet and special-occasion meals. The growth of American wine production and availability of quality wine values make the addition of wine to our daily life very easy. Choosing a wine for sipping with your burger is really no different than selecting the perfect wine for that special birthday dinner: Pair simple wines with simple foods and complex wines with complex foods. Sounds pretty easy, huh?
For years, one of my annual traditions involved a wine-and-burger pairing. Every year, millions of liters of Beaujolais Nouveau are bottled a few weeks after harvest and shipped from France to thirsty wine drinkers worldwide. Beginning in the mid-1980s, I would pick up my first case on its release date: precisely a minute after midnight on the third Thursday of November. Then I’d head to the closest White Castle to buy a bag of Slyders to accompany my midnight Beaujolais snack. To my knowledge, this food-and-wine combination has never really caught on, but for me it served as the unofficial start of the holiday season, always occurring one week prior to Thanksgiving.
But in the world of burgers, the range of styles is huge, so the wine you might choose to complement a small square White Castle burger (try a lighter wine such as a rosé or the aforementioned Beaujolais) would not be the same as what would work with a Thickburger from Hardee’s or a Steakburger from Steak ’n Shake (a bigger Zin, Syrah or a great Missouri Chambourcin). Remember the “simple with
simple” rule.
You wouldn’t pull out your great old Bordeaux, Napa Valley Cabernet or aged Norton for a hot dog and potato chips, but you might think of a nice chilled glass of rosé or a lusciously fruity and slightly sweet pink Catawba. If you like spicy hot mustard on your dog, the Catawba actually works very well to put out some of that heat. (Hot dog note: Check out the half-pound, nearly foot-long Angus beef hot dog available at several local Wehrenberg theaters. Fantastic!)
A relative of our hot dog would be any of the dozens of varieties of Wursts, available in flavors from fruity to hot and spicy. When trying to pair food and wine, I always suggest thinking about the origin of the food as it often naturally suggests some wine ideas. Wurst is German, so I think of that country’s light, soft, fruity and slightly sweet whites. German Rieslings are amazing wines, but don’t overlook the gorgeous Riesling-style Vignoles that our local wineries have mastered.
Pizza and red wine is another classic combo. Here the choice is very similar to the choices for burgers: The more toppings you have on your pizza, the more complex the wine needs to be to match the flavors. Pasta is basically the same situation. On a personal taste note, don’t open any great wine if your pizza has Provel cheese; save your better wines for mozzarella and open something simple and light instead.
If you are visiting the Colonel and getting a bucket of fried chicken, find a young, crisp, fresh dry white such as Pinot Grigio or a local Vidal or Seyval Blanc. These refreshing whites wake up your taste buds after each crunch of the chicken skin. These should be served quite cold to enhance their thirst-quenching character.
One of our favorite snack foods is popcorn (with a hearty amount of melted butter), a natural with Chardonnay, which is often described as “buttery.” When people use this descriptor, they are really describing the combined flavors of oak aging and malolactic fermentation, a process that changes the malic acid (as in apples) to the lactic acid (as in milk) and gives the wine a “buttery” character. This is precisely the same flavor found in the buttered popcorn. You might also try a barrel-aged Chardonel with your popcorn.
Peanut butter – crunchy or freshly made, but not creamy – is great when served with a full-bodied dry red such as a Zin or a beautiful Norton. This is one of my favorites for late-night David Letterman watching.
When I visited the renowned vineyards of France’s Burgundy region, a vintner gave me great advice on selecting wine: He made white wine for lunch and red wine for dinner. That works for me.
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