Comments on: Green curry prawns – an “impossible” pairing from the White House state dinner

By: The Party Crashers’ winery, 36 million bottles, $30k for KJ – sipped and spit - Out of Bottle

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:19:38 +0000

[...] the White House state dinner. And perhaps to the surprise of wine lovers, it wasn’t about the two typos and at least one disastrous food-wine pairing on the menu! Instead, it was about the “party crashers,” Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who waltzed [...]

By: Medsen Fey

Medsen Fey — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 03:28:33 +0000

Burn me as a heretic if you please, but I find the best pairing for a spicy curry dish like this is a mead (a honey-wine). Rabbit’s Foot meadery makes an excellent sweet mead. The B. Nektar meadery also produces some award winners. If you’ve not tried mead with curry, you’ve missed a treat.

By: bd

bd — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:42:55 +0000

presumptuous statement from someone who admittedly hasn’t even tried the wine… the ‘o7 beckmen estate grenache is 15.2% alc. smells of sweet cherry, finishes dry with a playful combo of dried cranberry and subtle spice. i happen to find it delicious. if the curry isn’t too overwhelming it would work well and really well with the smoked collard greens, like a light chateauneuf.

By: Tim Hanni

Tim Hanni — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:34:28 +0000

Balance the salt and acidity and you can serve a Cabernet with this “impossible” pairing. And I guarantee the additions will make the food taste better on it’s own. Wine and food pairing, especially at this ridiculous level of conjecture and imagination, is completely metaphorical. Doubt it? Come have lunch with me. Seriously. I will make green curry prawns and serve any wine you think ‘can’t possibly go with it.’

By: The Party Crashers' winery, 36 million bottles, $30k for KJ - sipped and spit | Dr Vino's wine blog

Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:53:34 +0000

By: EastCoast Chris

EastCoast Chris — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:27:38 +0000

There are some really crisp Viogners from Virginia that would do fine with curry. Plenty of Riesling from Finger Lakes, NY, too. Or just go with some Kung Fu Girl Riesling from the Magnificent Wine Co.

By: Brigitte Armenier

Brigitte Armenier — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:35:42 +0000

Mike Veseth, Brooks “Ara” is a 50% blend Biodynamic vineyards, and Beckmen Vineyards is 100% biodynamic, Demeter-certified.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 13:15:06 +0000

Yes Dave, I can see your point: that American exceptionalism applies to wine and food pairings during state dinners.

But I’m less convinced by your eleventh hour Champagne, Port and pie tasting where everything magically “works” and the pies actually improve the Champagne. Sounds like the booze talking. . .

By: Dave McIntyre

Dave McIntyre — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 04:01:37 +0000

Brut sparkling does fine with a lot of desserts. You weren’t there. You don’t know. I just finished Thanksgiving dinner with a bunch of Champagnes, and although I opened a Graham’s 1997 Port with the pies (and yes, you may slam me for infanticide with that one, as it was – and I stress WAS – still young), I went back and tried the pumpkin, apple and cranberry/walnut pies with the (dry) sparkling wines, and —- sorry folks, but they worked just fine. They even kicked up a notch with the spice in the pies.

By: The Wine Mule

The Wine Mule — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 01:40:49 +0000

I admit I missed the brut sparkler with the desserts. Gruet Demi-Sec from New Mexico would have been a fine accompaniment.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 20:11:31 +0000

The forced pairings – red with the main course and (presumably dry) sparking with dessert – even though they don’t work are typical clueless but popular mainstream amateur pairings.

Most weddings are catered exactly the same way.

To be fair, the sommelier could have easily been given such constraints by his client(s); especially since he’s not mentioned in the credits on the menu.

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 14:39:24 +0000

Note: contrast is important, wanted to make that clear. This is one reason I’d want coffee with my dessert…

I’d wish more people would read, for starters:

The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth
Richard Olney’s entire canon (including memoirs)
Adventures on the Wine Route
La Bonne Cuisine de Mme. E. Saint-Ange

…not to emulate, but to learn from…

By: gary

gary — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 12:38:32 +0000

The menu itself didn’t look too inspiring to me to even give a thought to the wine pairings.

By: Chris Miller

Chris Miller — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 07:38:38 +0000

Pardon me, but a brut with the desserts course? Not for me. Give me demi-sec, at least. Don’t know what’s out there (American), but surely something could be found. I’m afraid that it seems to me (an American) like the unfortunately typical American tendency to go for contrast as a poor substitute for the (generally unknown, here) more fundamental goal of harmonious integration. Partly as a result that we just don’t cook with wine, here, and so have so little sense of intuitive matching. Often the object seems to be things that will “stand up next to each other,” instead of synergy… A brut with sweets just sounds icky. And I’ll take coffee with the sweets, anyways. Whatever happened to finishing the red with a cheese, before the sweets course?

By: Reid

Reid — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 03:25:39 +0000

Who hires a Swedish chef to cook Indian food, anyway?