The holy grail of wine

No matter what I write in this column, my friends ask me to cut the crap and come straight to the point. They tell me to lay the ground rules for pairing wine with food, and find it very hard to believe me when I say I am groping for an answer. The truth is I can never seem to make up my mind about which wine goes best with what food.

Worse, I can never find a satisfactory answer to my questions. This conundrum stems from the fact that no two sets of taste buds are alike, so each palate responds to food and drink in its own unique way. I know so many people who find it very difficult to handle champagne, but I love it with about everything, from seared scallops to chicken malai kebabs. But I find it almost impossible to match any cheese with any wine, especially with a red, which is said to be the best for this purpose.

Before we get down to the specifics, here’s the thumb rule. When you match food and wine, it’s not the meat that matters, so forget about the old rule—white wine with fish and white meats like chicken and red wine with red meats— and focus more on the preparation style. Mutton kebabs cannot be married to a particular wine just because a roghan josh goes well with it. Penne with arrabiata sauce cannot go well with the wine that works with a creamy fettuccine Alfredo.

Wine and food pairings, like human relationships, are fraught with unpredictability. Another old-fashioned rule holds that wine of a particular region goes best only with the food of that part of the world. This may hold true for French, Italian or Spanish (Old World) wines, but it may not work with New World wines. Take South African wines. What goes best with them? Xhosa (pronounced koh-suh) food dominated by corn and maize preparations?

The cuisine of the Indian community? Or of the Boers? What about Australian wines? You can’t pinpoint a dish—beyond lamb roast—and say it’s Australian, for the kitchen Down Under marries influences as diverse as Italian, Lebanese, Chinese, Indian and Sri Lankan. And yes, what about American wines? Which of them was created keeping a quarter-pounder or corn in the cob in mind? I’ve found an Amarone, an iconic Italian wine, pairing effortlessly with a mutton roghan josh, and a Pinotage, a South African wine with a long history, works like magic with mutton seekh kebabs. In the wonderful world of wine, gastronomical borders between nations are collapsing.

With a global cuisine, in the same way as MTV and McDonald’s, breaking down psychological barriers, the business of wine and food pairing promises to unravel in its own unique way. As more and more societies get down to adopting a wine culture—I foresee a lot happening in Russia (it is fast moving from vodka to wine), China and India—the rules we thought were set in stone are going to be thrown out of the window. Till the Chinese convince the world that red wine must be drunk with Coke, and till the Russians conclude their search for a wine to go with beluga on bliny, and we find a match for our own chhole-bhature, no one can claim to have the final word on pairing wine with food.