Great food wines
Is it a slam on a wine to call it a “great food wine”? In today’s NYT dining section, Eric Asimov intimates as much when discussing extreme food – wine pairings with white wines from the Loire:
“Are Bourgueils, along with similar wines from the neighboring villages of Chinon and Saint-Nicolas-de-Bourgueil, great wines? No, but they are great food wines.”
I certainly have called wines great food wines too. But I got to thinking, doesn’t that mean that they are “great wines” since wine is best enjoyed with food? Why cede the title of “great wine” to heavily extracted, hedonistic fruit bombs?
Aug
17
2005
On August 17th, 2005 at 11:36 am ,Lenn wrote:
Asimov definitely uses “food wines” as a pseudo-nice way of saying wines are of lesser quality I think. In a piece he wrote a few months ago about LI reds, he said less than complimentary things and then deemed them good food wines.
I don’t consider the descriptor “good food wine” good OR bad. I use it as something to explain to my readers how I think a wine can best be enjoyed…or how it shines brightest.
On August 17th, 2005 at 1:06 pm ,Jack wrote:
Not a slam, but not always a compliment, either. Some wines that I taste just call or scream out for food. And yes, these are never the over-extracted, high alcohol, hedonistic fruit bombs.
Oh, and I’ve had two great Bourgueils, a 1982 and a 1989 from Pierre-Jacques Druet (about 7 and 8 years ago).
As for calling something a great wine because it matches perfectly with food, well, that’s just not right with me. A very satisfying wine, yes. (And sometimes the cheap, simple wine outshines the bigger boys with a meal.)