Wine Pairings for Mexican Cuisine
From the Orange County Register
Thursday, September 22, 2005
By Anne Valdespino, Special to the Register
Mexican, reinvented: the cuisine has gone upscale, and many diners are seeking to pair it with wine
Let's get Mexican takeout! I'll bring the wine! Whaaaaa??? Don't you mean the beer, the tequila or the recipe for the killer margaritas?
Nope. The days of red-hot tacos washed down with beverages that cool off or strip grease from the palate are over. Mexican food has become so mainstream and so upscale that now consumers are seeking fine wines to go with their favorite authentic dishes.
"As more and more Americans consume wine, we realize the possibilities are really boundless. There's no reason why Mexican food shouldn't be considered wine-worthy," said Karen MacNeil, author of "The Wine Bible" (Workman, $19.95) and the host of "Wine, Food & Friends" on Public Television. "The simplest things like guacamole are absolutely incredible with wine, and it seems like a surprising idea until you taste it and think, 'Gosh, why didn't I realize this before?' "
In 1999, MacNeil participated in the Worlds of Flavor Conference, devoted to regional cuisines of Mexico, at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in the Napa Valley. In a report for Sunset magazine, she quoted Rick Bayless, conference chairman and chef-owner of Frontera Grill and Topolobampo in Chicago: "Wine is the human race's most refined beverage. So I'm committed to pairing it with real Mexican food, which is both sophisticated and elegant."
Bayless' Web site spells out pairings for specific ingredients whose flavors recur in Mexican cuisine. MacNeil drew on Bayless' insights, added her experiences at the conference and conducted her own experiments to come up with these guidelines for pairing:
- The most successful wines are fresh, sleek and crisp, with acidity. Whites: Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Grigio or Pinot Gris, dry Riesling, Albariño. Reds: Spanish Riojas, Italian Chiantis and Pinot Noir.
- A second group includes wines with a plush, thick, jammy, mouth feel: Zinfandel, Shiraz, Beaujolais.
- Avoid Chardonnay.
Mexican food has layers of flavors and demands specific wine pairings, MacNeil said. "They often 'dry-sauté' vegetables. They'll pop a tomatillo or tomatoes or cloves of garlic into a hot skillet and just let them roast. When you have intense charring like that - it's not exactly cold or hot smoking - it creates complex flavors, and one of the best contrasts to that is acidity."
On the other hand, one simple, pervasive ingredient – chilies – presents an intricate challenge. "They are used maybe not as aggressively as in Tex-Mex cooking; fine Mexican food strikes a better balance," MacNeil said. "But they're undeniably there. You can go with high acidity, or the other stream of thinking is to have enough fruit in the wine that it acts as a cushion for a dish that has chilies as a main factor. That's another important principle. So, I'm always thinking acid or I'm thinking lots of fruit."
What about California's two biggest wines: Cabernet and Chardonnay? "They almost never work," MacNeil said. "Oaky Chards fight with Mexican food, and high-tannin wines, like a lot of Bordeaux, are too severe; the combination of chilies and tannin is a train wreck in the mouth."
But Nic J. Villarreal, founder and operations manager of Taléo Mexican Grill in Irvine, doesn't count them out. "In the last 20 years, the rule is: Drink what you like. I let people choose. I bring three tastes of different wines, and we'll do Chardonnay for people who are used to drinking that, or we'll do Merlot, Pinot and Cabernet. They get a bit of an education as it goes along."
Villarreal serves tastes in Riedel stemware and recommends California Cabs over Bordeaux. "California has felt the influence of Mexico. Over the last 20-30 years, the wine growers and makers have been gearing the wines to an advanced palate, without being too complex. Bordeaux is too heavy and complicated; there's too much stuff going on. But try a simple Cab out of Russian River, and it's better with Mexican food. I wouldn't turn Bordeaux down, but I would prefer California."
Villarreal suggests roasted chicken in mole poblano with Gainey Merlot, chilies rellenos with Matanzas Creek Sauvignon Blanc, carnitas with Chalone Pinot Noir or Foxen Cabernet.
Taléo presents wine dinners regularly with vintners such as Ferrari-Carano and pairs every dish, from appetizers to desserts. "O.C. is very, very wine savvy. People who are true diners here say, 'I want to do Mexican but I don't want to feel like I've eaten a ton of bricks,' and the wine list we've developed works with that. You can go spicy and do a white wine like a Sauvignon Blanc to cool it down or a wonderful Pinot Noir to go with the spices."
Can't we just drink wines from Spain, Chile and Argentina with Mexican food?
Just because they were colonized by Spain doesn't mean anything when it comes to pairing, said George Pavlov of Hi-Time Wine Cellars in Costa Mesa. "Chilean and Argentine wines are very different from each other, and Spanish wine is drastically different from either of those two. As George Bernard Shaw said, 'England and America are two countries separated by a common language.' Those are three wine regions separated by a common language."
Is there an easy way out? "There's no traditional paradigm to follow, but I think a dry rosé is probably a good all-around workhorse for different Mexican cuisines," Pavlov said.
Or there's a simple little principle that anything that you would drink with beer you can drink with sparkling wine, MacNeil says. "It's cold, bubbly, refreshing, and sparkling wine has an advantage over beer because it's got more acidity. We went to Texas barbecue joints in the hill country and surreptitiously poured sparkling wine into Pilsner glasses for these big guys wearing boots and hats, and it was astounding to see how they responded to it."
The best rule is experimentation, MacNeil says.
"We did an experiment at (the Culinary Institute of America) a few years ago with mole and four radically different wines - a crisp Riesling, which was not a good idea, and a rosé that I thought was going to be really great, but was not. We had a California sparkling wine (Napa Valley Blanc de Noir weighted toward Pinot Noir), which was pretty good, and a California Rhône blend (Syrah, Grenache, Mourvedre), which edged out the sparkler. All the tasters were wine and food knowledgeable, and still we had a classic split: Half went for one and half thought the other was perfect."
The truth is, a lot of Mexican cuisine is uncharted territory. Asked about the influences of lime – a chemical preservative and emulsifier mixed into the masa in corn tortillas, tamales and a host of other dishes – those interviewed for the story had no definite ideas about which wines would work. Lime can create false mineral notes in delicate wines. MacNeil said she had not yet considered that flavor element and would have to do some more experimentation. "No one has come right out and created a strategy of pairing," MacNeil said. "It's a big challenge for a new generation. When it happens I think it will be done by someone very close to the border or in Mexico."
That's a challenge Villarreal is looking forward to. "You've got Rick Bayless in Chicago, Doug Rodriguez in New York and Richard Sandoval in San Francisco. If you watched how Italian food evolved over 30 or 40 years, at first all you had was pizza and checkered tablecloths, and now there are wonderful four- and five-star restaurants. Europeans came from Italy to show Americans what true Italian food was. Now it's our turn. Mexican food is really coming into its own."