Vintage School 4.2

There are few truly great matches between wine & food, in fact several foods are completely incompatible with most wines. Artichokes contain the compound cynarin, which for most people, creates sweetness in wine where there isn't any. Oysters and cheese can cause similar clashes. When wine & food pairings are attempted, they're usually according to one of two principles: 1. Harmony; and 2. Contrast or counterpoint as represented by the two symbols above.

4.2 Attitudes Towards Wine & Food
& the Birth of Self Indulgence.

The coupling of food with wine seems to us today to be a natural affair; both are mixtures of different chemical compounds manifested as taste, texture, aroma and flavour. More than two thousand years ago, the founder of the Western World's first culinary school expressed an elementary appreciation for the two, writing"...a fat eel is particularly good when accompanied by a good Phalernum", referring to a wine still produced in the region of Naples. However, the author, Archestratus, never actuallypromotedthe coupling of food and wine. In fact he was if anything the opposite, writing that a food of quality has"the height of pleasure within itself"needing only be seasoned with salt, olive oil and perhaps a little cumin.(1)  Partly this attitude must have been due to the nature of ancient wine making - wines were not kept in barrels at that time, thus they would not have matured sufficiently to develop many of the secondary flavours conducive to pairing.

It's because culture, cuisine and wine are so closely intertwined that the practice of accompanying a specific wine with a food appeared so late in civilisation. Even in the most noble families of Europe,"...cuisine did not start to emerge from the morass of medieval cookery until the sixteenth century".Before this time,"Grand medieval meals often involved several simultaneous combinations of soup, meat, fish, poultry, and sweet dishes...a chaotic medley, [for which] matching wines would have been inutile".(2)

Long before aristocratic society began to consider the practice fashionable, we find intimate relationships between wine and food amongst the unremarkable agrarian cultures populating the wine regions of Europe. (These relationships extended not only to wine's role as the preeminent food beverage, but also to its use in food preparation as a marinade, tenderiser and enhancer of flavours)(3) From the Chateau of Bordeaux and the cellars of Burgundy, to the Bodegas of Jerez and the slopes of Germany, to the vineyards of Italy, Greece, Bulgaria and Moldavia, regional wines have being traditionally consumed with regional foods for centuries.
There were two sides to this: Where red wine was more popular or plentiful, for example, it was not uncommon to see it served with fresh seafood, without too much consideration for the character of either. ('Vin ordinaire de bouche' is a term still used by the French to describe versatile, simple wines to accompany a wide array of dishes). However, occasionally regional pairings work astonishingly well as if by some magical serendipity, 'terroir' has bestowed complementary qualities to both flora and fauna. In the Muscadet producing area of France, it's long been known that an acidic wine tastes much more delicious if the Belon oyster is dipped in a mignonette sauce of shallots and vinegar.(4)'Choucroute', a regional Alsatian dish of sausage, ham and sauerkraut works

A dilemma for the 17th-century Dutch masters existed over whether to portray wine as a well-earned luxury or potentially ruinous substance. Here, a painting by Johannes Symoonisz Torrentius, Emblematic Still Life (1614), depicts a horse's harness behind a wine goblet as a symbol of restraint before indulgence.

particularly well with the districts famous Rieslings. The simpler wines of Italy, Greece and Southern France seem uniquely suited to many garlic laced Mediterranean dishes in the same way inexpensive Chianti, Valpolicella or Montepulciano is irreplaceable next to spaghetti in red sauce and Lambrusco pairs with traditional 'zampone' in Modena or Bologna (a local specialty consisting of pigs foot stuffed with forcemeat, bacon, truffles and seasoning)(5)  Whether arrived at sub-consciously or by deliberation, the food and wine synergies from these traditional wine regions mark the beginnings of reaction and honed adjustment to wine and food in combination with one another.
In certain quarters, this notion was viewed almost as a form of depravity, one which leads to idleness and gluttony and keeps people from their work, hence the emergence of convenience foods; sandwiches, smorgasbords and snacks - all easily prepared and secondary to work.

No where else were these puritanical attitudes so at odds than in France during the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Under royal patronage, culinary advances (modified over the centuries by Italians - esp. from Florence) found a heightened expression as cooking emerged from a craft and began to flourish as an art. 'Grande Cuisine' had never been 'grander.'  However, the majority had never been poorer and starvation brought in the French Revolution. Thankfully, through democracy, French gastronomy lost nothing.  On the contrary:"...When it ceased to be the privilege of a comparatively few extravagant idlers, it brought to the mass of the people the glad tidings that food is not to man what fodder is to his horse, merely a necessity, but that it could be and that it should be a joy as well. This happy realization came about gradually: its dawn, as brilliant and sudden as that of the tropical sun, came in during the first decade of the nineteenth century, with Careme..." (6) Still admired for greatly simplifying and codifying the style of cooking known as "haut cuisine", Marie Anton Careme (1784-1833), perhaps as a result of been brought up upon a starvation diet, was also the apostle of majesty; his dishes were nearly always richly flavoured and his cakes were works of art. Alexander I said of him'What we did not know was that he taught us to eat'.Not surprisingly, Careme is often thought of today as the first 'celebrity chef'.* Two other significant names (amongst many others who followed), are Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826), who penned "The Physiology of Taste"(1825) and Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935), the most celebrated chef of his time and author of the magnum opus "Escoffier: The Complete Guide to the Art of Modern Cookery" (1903), a standard of classical French cooking that remains valuable to this day. (See the article "A History of Gastronomy" for more).

Marie Anton Careme (1784-1833)	Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin (1755-1826)	Auguste Escoffier (1846-1935)

It was Brillat-Savarin who first coined the word "gourmandise", defining it as"a passionate reasoned and habitual preference for that which delights the palate". His family came of heroic stock and all died at the dinner table, fork in hand."Brillat's great-aunt, for example died at the age 93 while sipping a glass of old virieu, while Pierrette, his sister, two months before her hundredth birthday, uttered (at table) the following words which are forever enshrined in the memory of good French men:"Vite," she cried, "apportez-moi le dessert - je sens que je vais passer!"  Yet despite his conspicuous love of food, Savarin managed to distinguish gourmandise from gluttony. In fact, he described the latter as"the enemy of excess"; while the former was"...morally...strict obedience to the creator who, having commanded us to eat in order to live, invites us with appetite, encourages us with flavour and rewards us with pleasure".To which he appended that"Alcohol is the monarch of liquids, it lifts the palate to the highest degree of exaltation; and in its various forms, has opened up new sources of pleasure...Truly matched food and drink form a civilized - perhaps indeed an artistic-creation in the world of gastronomy".(7)

Here was both an appeal to civilisation and a prophetic declaration from one of gastronomy's high priests.
What followed during the forty years from 1871 to 1910 was an enthusiastic assent as the ideas of Escoffier regarding 'Grande Cuisine' as a fine art gained the recognition and patronage of the leaders of Society both in England and in the United States, "...luxury and good taste reached in perfect harmony heights never before attained"(8). All of this was happening despite the fact that great wines and culinary prowess have never been essential to human survival. Yet the marriage of food and wine seemed to ignite the culinary imagination, beginning an adventure into chemo-sensory self-indulgence. The centuries old tradition of drinking ordinary wine with ordinary meals was giving way to a more intellectual search for interaction, compatibility of flavours, nuance and balance.

Self-indulgence has continued in some diverse and unexpected territories throughout the 20th Century. But for the most part, the traditional philosophy on food and wine pairing has remained in simpler times and foods, equating to traditional formulas such as"Red Wine goes with red meat; White Wine goes with fish and poultry" or trite recommendations like"noisettes of venison with white sauce is best served with Chardonnay 'X' ". If one's matching repertoire was to move beyond simplistic maxims some kind of extended formal training or secret initiation was required.  Naturally, there were some frustrated reactions to this, one of which is a kind of 'culinary nihilism' that's still encountered today.(9)It's an unfortunate and uncoordinated attitude to wine and food, strung together by some personal idiosyncrasies and the slogan"If it feels good, then drink it" meaning: Any wine can be served with any food on desires. In reality, it's a reaction that contributes even less of value than the time honored conventional approach, and leaves two important questions unanswered:"Why do some wines work with particular foods while others don't? And "How can we define the mechanics of the food and wine pairing process?"

It was not until 1980's that two gastronomic pioneers sought to formulate self-evident concepts for food and wine matching. The book "Red Wine with Fish: the New Art of Matching Wine with Food" jolted the conventional wisdom when it burst on the scene in 1989."There are no experts on matching wine and food,"wrote co-authors David Rosengarten and Joshua Wesson, who declared that individuals can find pleasing wine and food matches by following their own palates and a few sensible principles. The authors pointed out the impossibility of harmonizing the world's myriad wines, foods and cooking styles with carved-in-stone precepts like"white wine with fish"and"red wine with meat."  Those maxims appealed to previous generations seeking a semblance of order, however simplistic, in what they saw as a complex, daunting task. The duo advised readers to throw out "The Rules" and pair wine and food based on two principles:

(a)  Harmony / Similarity - whereby one tries to blend the shared characteristics into a harmonious  whole, for example, a French Chablis and shellfish, a Pedro Ximenez Sherry with Chocolate cake or Christmas pudding, Amontillado Sherry and almonds (nutty & nutty), Blanc de Noirs / Rose champagne and strawberries (strawberry & strawberry) and so on.	a. Harmony.
(b)  Complementary Contrasts  - whereby an opposing flavour is introduced that adds a needed dimension to the food. The opposing flavours may be another food (apples and cheese, cranberry sauce with roast turkey) or a wine (roast chicken and Beaujolais or the cream and butter sauces of the Loire Valley which beg for the crisp acidity of Sancerres, Pouilly-Fumés, Vouvrays of the region).	b. Contrast / counterpoint

Rather than a single perfect choice for a dish, one might find multiple pairings that were pleasing in different ways. The book was considered revolutionary at the time, encouraging open-mindedness about matching at a time when chefs were starting to look beyond European models to a more diverse global gastronomy.(10) The matchmaking practices of harmony and contrast which were considered rather tentatively in the 1980's are now generally accepted as standards in the wine and food industry today. 

Conclusion
What are the direct relationships and reactions between the food and wine components, flavours and textures?
If we can understand the principles that govern these relationships, and allow for time and experimentation, we will be on our way to raising our culinary experiences from enjoyable to memorable, with each food and wine match in and of itself becoming a delightful experience and a stepping stone in a life long learning curve.
The next chapter attempts to explain some of these principles.