Hello, bonjour, and welcome to your new Bonner Private Wines video. Today I want to dream with you a little.
I want to imagine with you a week in paradise, a Heavenly Week to really indulge in some of the most delightful wine and food pairings in existence.
Imagine that every day of that week you treat yourself and your loved ones to a classic dish from traditional French, Italian, Argentine and more world cuisines. And you pick the best possible wine to match with each one of them. You treat yourself on Monday with a fantastic dish and a fantastic wine on Tuesday. On Wednesday, every day until Sunday, with one tasty and time tested ideal wine and food pairings.
So here are seven of the most delightful wine and food pairing ideas from the world’s tastiest and most traditional cuisines. Some of the best wine and food pairing in a fantasy of a week seven days, seven food pairings, some of the best that the world has ever created.
Monday: Sushi & Riesling
Let’s start light on Monday. We’ve got a whole week to get through and we don’t want to clog up our taste buds in our stomachs with heavy foods just yet.
So for a light, healthy and really delicate meal, let’s head out to Japan. Japanese sushi is offer some of the finest flavors to be found in traditional cuisines from anywhere around the world. The delicate seafood flavors of raw fish or prawns or scallops, the sashimi (so those are the ones without rice, just the fish slices, the nigiri sushi is the one with a slice of fish on top of a little bit of rice).
Those, you know, all the sushi rolls wrapped in a sheet of seaweed called nori. All of those offer extremely naturally subtle flavors from the land with the rice and the sea with the fish. Just one of those most perfect combination known to man. With sushi the best type of wine is probably riesling with its zingy acidity and its aromas of lime and lemon.
There’s some flowers in there, delicate green mango and bit of ginger as well. So Rieslings are a universe of sensations of their own, and what makes them perfect with Japanese cuisine is that they’re not only sharp, but also really playful yet delicate flavor-wise, mineral, really.
German rieslings or from Alsace in France, or even from Oregon and Washington, from Tasmania down under, why not? They’re all wonderful with sushi.
So choose a very dry riesling if you think you’d prefer that, although a little bit of residual sweetness in the wine to balance out the acidity will work also fantastically well. A classic perfect combination that can never ever go wrong.
Tuesday: Lamb & Pinot Noir
For Tuesday let’s have a little meat now. But one of the subtlest type of meat available with lamb.
Some of us only remember about this delightful combo of lamb with Pinot Noir once a year around Easter. But I think it’s an outstanding combination regardless of the season: it’s hearty enough for winter, but light and subtle enough for summer as well. So this is a really classic type of dish in French cuisine from Burgundy in particular, but it’s been adopted in many countries that offer both great lamb and tasty pinot noir, like in New Zealand, in particular Australia, or again, the Pacific Northwest.
We had a delicious pinot noir in our domestic wine selection a little while ago. If you still have that in your cellar, by any chance, it would be absolutely perfect. Picture a nice rack of lamb, delicately seasoned with rosemary and a bit of garlic seared, crisp and caramelized on the outside. Still pinkish on the inside with a delicately fruity pinot noir.
Not a rosé, a red, light Pinot noir, and its notes of sour cherry and mixed berries, its green pepperiness, its light body and silky texture. Imagine the combination. We need more lamb and Pinot noir in our life, don’t we?
Wednesday: Garlic Prawns & Sauvignon Blanc
And if you like prawns and you like garlic, well, you’d probably agree with me that we should really cook prawns in garlic more often.
It’s easily the easiest dish to prepare. Here, take some prawns and so take them in a pan with a bit of butter or olive oil and abundant garlic, maybe a pinch of salt, herbs perhaps. And you’re done. Now the result? One of the tastiest dishes you can make in less than 10 minutes as an entree or as a main perfect again for any season.
With this, to make the experience really standout even further, pick a nice bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. Really I think any Sauvignon Blanc would work really well here. A crisp unoaked one or even a richer, oaky style, like a fumé blanc even would be perfect because Sauvignon Blanc has this crystal clean acidity, a heap of citrusy flavors, lime, lemon, grapefruit. It withstands the power of the garlic, but it’s also going to amplify them and tame them.
All of this at the same time. A French Sauvignon blanc, one from New Zealand or California, we had this delicious example at some point in our selection from New Zealand that would be perfect. The grassy aromas of the wine, its citrusy flavors just combine somehow with the taste of the prawns and the garlic, and it creates absolute magic, really, if you ask me, and I can’t really quite explain it because it’s magic, but it’s absolutely there.
If those ingredients, prawns and garlic appeal to you go with the Sauvignon blanc, you won’t regret it. It’s to be hard for me to pick my favorite in those seven wine and food combinations that I’m talking about here, but this one would definitely be in my top three.
Thursday: Spaghetti Bolognese & Chianti
And for Thursday, we are making it this time very easy for ourselves. Tonight, we’re having an Italian themed dinner party with bologna, spaghetti or spaghetti Bolognese, as it should really be. Pronounce it in Italian spaghetti bolognese. This could be a lasagna dish as well, if you prefer. Those are dishes most of us have fairly often as you can buy them ready to eat at the supermarket, of course.
But take this ultra classic dish from Italian cuisine to a different level, to do that, well, first you could make the tomato sauce. It takes a little while to prepare with the peeled tomatoes and the spices, the oregano, the garlic, etc. but it’s definitely worth the effort to have a much finer tomato sauce. If you can’t be bothered with it, at least pick a nice bottle of Chianti wine. We sent you several options not so long ago in our last Italian selection. Chiantis in particular, although most super Tuscans as well would work absolutely wonders here.
All of those are perfect because they offer powerful, fruity flavors of cherries with herbal spices to create fireworks or sensations with the dish. But they’re also acidic and lively enough to cut through the meaty richness of those types of Italian dishes. It’s not by chance that the Italians make this type of wine to go with their classic traditional dishes.
They just work wonders together.
Friday: Smoked Salmon & Dry Sparkling
And now it’s Friday night, so I suggest a romantic dinner with your other half for that could be really a relaxing evening with your friends at home. Here is an entree that’s always sure to please and satisfy the senses: smoked salmon and dry sparkling. Let’s call it champagne, shall we? What can go wrong here?
The crisp and refreshing wine cuts through the salty richness of the fish, the smokiness of the fish, while the zingy lime flavors of the champagne add to the experience without even needing a squeeze of lemon on the fish. A perfect entree, which is also a fantastic choice for your Christmas dinner or lunch. Certainly a classic in my family for Christmas.
And it’s the opportunity to cheer with everyone with a glass of bubbly before the meal. You could also add, of course, a few toasts and a side of salad and you’ve got a nice healthy main there. Tasty as well. Super simple, super classic, but simply super, if you ask me. Think about that.
Saturday: Steak & Malbec
All right. We have to have some serious meat here at some point during this perfect wine and food week, don’t we?
So let’s take the classic pairing from our favorite wine country here at the wine club, the one we love the most. That’s, of course, Argentina. I’m sure you’ve tasted and proved that this combination always works like no other. For those who love their steak, we have some of the best Malbec on offer in the US with the club because they come from high altitude vineyards, which makes them concentrated, fruity and powerful, yet less heavy and cloying than all the Argentine Malbec from the lower area.
So those altitude, extreme altitude malbecs lift the food and wine pairing experience rather than adding weight and sweetness to it. They respect the texture and the flavors of a good steak much better, adding not only power but also acidity. Just select your favorite cuts, nicely seared on each side, a pinch of salt, a side of potatoes and arugula salad.
Open an extreme altitude Malbec and take your friends to delicious Argentina for the night.
Sunday: Blue Cheese & Viognier
Finally, where I live in France, a meal is never complete without a piece, a bit, of cheese, right? And we have to have a cheese and food pairing for a selection of the most perfect classic pairings because cheese and wine together are one of the greatest joys in life.
I think my personal favorite there has got to be combining a blue cheese with this lesser known type of wine, originally from the Rhone Valley in the south of France called Viognier. That’s a type of grape you can find, Viognier, of course, from the south of France, from the Rhone Valley, or you can also find similar types of white Rhone type blends of white wine, combining viognier with a bit of Grenache from California over the Pacific Northwest.
Viognier is quite acidic a wine, which is needed with the rich cheese, but it’s also extremely oily and textural with powerful notes of sunny stone fruits like apricot and white peach. The softness of the wine’s texture, the fruitiness of the fruit flavors, contrasting and combining with the saltiness of the cheese and the blue cheese’s somewhat mushroom flavors, in particular.
It’s hard to explain why it and how, but believe me, it just works fantastically well together as an entrée, if you prefer your cheese before a meal, or after the main if you want to have it how we have it here in France. This is a combination for the rich multi-course meals like Sundays long family lunches.
While blue cheese also works very well with sweet wines as well, this is just way heavier and cloying with the sweetness of the wine, while with a rich, dry type of fruity white wine like Viognier, this is a much finer and brighter component to a meal that I’m suggesting here for you to experience.
And here you have it. This was my picks for a perfect imaginary week, indulging in some of the best wine and food pairings I could really think of, at least tapping into traditional cuisines and established matches that millions have experienced before us and that countless will still continue to enjoy.
Those are timeless pairings that will live forever because they simply deliver magic. We know about them. We’ve probably experienced them, at least some of them before. But while there’s some of the simplest ones to put together, we don’t think about them often enough. While we really should, we need more of these seven wine and food pairing combinations in our lives to make it better and tastier.
And I hope I’ve reminded you of that today. Thanks for watching and I will see you soon. In the wonderful world of wine.
