There’s lots of talk about matching food to wine and with the advent of so many international cooking influences affecting the tastes of our food, the old rules of white with white meat, red with red meat no longer apply.
So how DO you select a wine to accompany those special dishes.?
Katinka’s advice? “Out with the notion of old ideas was the first thing – we now need to match the weight of the dish with the weight of the wine and flavour intensity with the same flavour intensity. The five taste sensations (sweetness, acidity, saltiness, bitterness and umami) will change the taste of the wine. We must know how it would change the wine so that we can make different plans when we are going to enjoy a glass of wine with the meal."
Katinka’s lively approach to matching made it all so easy, particularly as she gives each wine a distinct personality.
A marinated gravadlax on a baby leaf salad with vinaigrette, worked beautifully with the Sauvignon Blanc. “A wine that always appears to be on the edge of a nervous breakdown,” said Katinka. As a fruity wine with good acidity/”nervousness” this makes it a good match for oily dressings – an unimpeachable match with marinated fish and salad leaves (even the bitter ones). The Swartland Sauvignon Blanc is a highly appetizing dry white, and serves perfectly wherever sharp seasonings and a certain amount of acidity in the food mandate a sharply textured wine.
A match made in heaven for the Chenin Blanc was a delicious goats cheese wrapped in Black Forest ham and drizzled with a balsamic reduction and pumpkin seeds. “A wine with good acidity, cries out for the acidity in the goat’s milk cheese, the mousse-like texture of the dish needed a sharp wine to add interest. It also made a clean breast of the saltiness of the ham. There is a dry nuttiness to the Swartland Chenin Blanc which latched onto the pumpkin seeds, and formed a perfect background to the light spicing of the balsamic reduction - tailor made for each other,” Katinka remarked.
You’ll never forget Pinotage the way Katinka describes it! "Think 'slutty' with fishnet stockings and impressive cleavage,” she says, and you can just see the wine dancing around the seared tuna, served as the third course."
“A wine with such a personality! It sometimes takes seven seconds to realize that it cannot match a dish; but it will always first try to see if it could not perhaps, succeed in the end. It was an impressive match with the seared tuna which likes a midweight red wine best of all. The acerbic character of Pinotage was an added feature that lifted the tuna precisely where we wanted it to be."
The roasted Karoo lamb rump was sublime with the Cabernet Sauvignon and is the one dish in the world that is perfectly suited to it. Cabernet Sauvignon likes plainly served, excellent quality red meats. The benchmark here is that if there is a sweet and spicy sauce served with red meat go for the slutty Pinotage! The rosemary infused ratatouille added to the taste sensation as rosemary, like thyme, wants Cabernet Sauvignon. A sophisticated and glorious match.
When it came to the cheese course we were in for a surprise – we’ve all been to cheese and wine evenings yet cheese is one of the trickiest foods to choose wine for. Why, you ask?
“Cheese is often strong and pungently aromatic; high in fat; it may be high in acid; it is often very salty and can have a gluey, mouth-coating texture. One must just know which cheese likes which wine in order to solve the problem,” Katinka advised.
Swartland Shiraz works with three cheeses perfectly: Appenzeller, Gruyère, and Witzenberger. Served with crackers only, sweet accompaniments or relishes could spoil the flavour of this red wine.
The rule is that when you want to serve something like green figs in syrup Port or a full-sweet wine has to become the companion.
Closing this informative and humorous evening with Swartland’s award winning Port, Thomas Sinn had prepared poached red wine pears. “When pears are cooked in a spicy red wine syrup, they beg for a fortified red wine. The Swartland Port neatly steps in here, and even coped with the ice cream, which usually anaesthetizes the tongue and palate, preventing full appreciation of any accompanying wine,” was Katinka’s final comment.
A colourful evening which gave everyone "food for thought", allowing us to see the wines in a different light.
Oh, and yes, another evening is being planned!