Sonoma County > Industry Insights > Odd Couples—Weird Wine and Food Pairings that Work

Odd Couples—Weird Wine and Food Pairings that Work

There are lots of rules for pairing wine with food, but what’s really fun is when you discover a combination that defies convention and works despite all logic, or that one that is just plain… well, different. Everyone knows that pinot noir and Salmon sing beautifully. Champagne and caviar is a no-brainer. But what’s a killer pairing for, say, buttered popcorn?

We asked our iconoclastic staff to share their favorite weird but wonderful discoveries, and they came through as expected, given the vast amount of research they do on such things. They show that those simple wine and food rules don’t always apply, because neither wine nor food is simple. Start with a great piece of baked halibut with only a little salt and pepper and the classic pairing with chardonnay will certainly work. But if you take that same piece of halibut, grill it, and top it with a spicy tomato salsa, you may be looking at a red wine to nail the match. Yeah… red wine with fish!

Charlie Tsegeletos, our beloved winemaker, discovered a pairing that breaks two rules at once—red wine with fish and red wine with spicy food. Shocking!

“I did a winemaker dinner in a Washington D.C. restaurant called Chef Geoff’s on April 7. It was a great restaurant and the room was sold out. One of the courses was a pepper-encrusted tuna and the tuna was entirely enveloped in very hot black pepper. It was a very spicy mouthful but when I took a sip of the Ancient Vines Mourvèdre it took the heat out of the dish and made all the flavors accessible—it was a wonderful pairing.”

Here’s a pairing marked not so much for defying convention but for using a varietal that’s off the beaten track to match with a classic entree. This one comes from Mike Elgie, a member of our crack (or cracked) tasting room team in Sonoma.

“[My wife] Carol cooked us up some great, fragrant short ribs a year ago and we had a half bottle of carignane left on the bar. So I said, 'Why not try it out!' You just never know what you have around the house until you look, or taste. So we poured ourselves some of the carignan with our ribs and they truly 'sang out tunes.' I think the carignan is just a good wine to cut through the fattier meat flavors and is a very good complement. “

If you’re going for wine with dessert, the rule of thumb is to look for a wine that’s a bit sweeter than the dessert, and that typically means a Sauterne, a late-harvest wine, or a port. But Charene Beltramo, our director of marketing, begs to differ.

“One of my favorite pairings is lemon cake and viognier. Whenever I bake the cake for dinner parties, I pull out the viognier... delish pairing.”

This last one was submitted anonymously, so it’s offered with a disclaimer. Plus, I’m pretty sure I know who it is, and I think he’s been off his meds for a while.

“I came upon this pairing by accident when I got home late from a great Neal Diamond tribute band concert, and I was so geared up I couldn’t sleep. I had the munchies, but there was no food in the house except a one-year-old bag of tutti frutti Gummi Bears and a bottle of Oakley Four Whites. So I gave it a go. Man, it really sang. Something about the fruit in those bears just meshed with the fruit in the Four Whites. As a plus, the wine helped loosen the sticky bear goo in my mouth so I could get my teeth apart. It really rocked. Since then I’ve enjoyed this pairing often—even breaking it out at the 60s-70s pop dance parties I frequently hold.”

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