Most wines are diminished by food. Discuss, writing on both sides of the paper at once, preferably in green ink.
How could it not be so? Wines today are intended to be perfect. They are intended to be in perfect balance, with perfectly ripe tannins (if applicable), perfect acidity and/or freshness and are, of course, perfect reflections of their terroir; and are often intended, moreover, to be judged and scored with no other accompaniment than the previous and next wines in the line-up. How can even the best-judged dish improve on that?
‘Oh, we make our wines to be drunk with food’, says every single wine producer in the world. Maybe; but you make them to be assessed without food. And if you are successful in that, food cannot improve them.
Not that they all care about that. As a witness, let me summon my recollections of various dinners and lunches over the years, all held by eminent wine producers at eminent restaurants, some of which clearly didn’t give two hoots about matching food and wine. Or rather, I would infer that the wine was left to its own devices – because a well-constructed dish, a well-constructed meal, should be perfect on its own, and need nothing else. Surely? Would you, would a top chef, serve a dish thinking, well, it’s not quite right on its own, but give it a glass of Coonawarra Cab and it’ll be bang-on?
First, a recent dinner at a London restaurant for a famous
