Dr Vino's wine blog

Site reader Sal sends in this query: “Can I submit an impossible food/wine pairing? How about Kim Chi? We’ve had it with Soju and it’s great but what if you like still wine (especially red)? Is a Kim Chi/wine pairing possible?”

Excellent question! Hit the comments with your thoughts. And in honor of Stephen Colbert’s rivalry with Korean pop sensation Rain to become the TIME most influential person of the year, as well as getting in the mood for an impossible food wine pairing, check out this hysterical video of Stephen singing in Korean.

Cinco de Mayo is just around the corner. Can we wine lovers come up with a wine pairing that will have people put down their margaritas and Coronas for a glass of wine? Probably not. But which wine would you pair with: burritos! Let us know whether you are talking about a beef, chicken or bean with your suggestion. Or is it…impossible?

Related: “Impossible food-wine pairing: chips and salsa!”
“Impossible food-wine pairing: breakfast burrito!”
(image; and yes, that was the best burrito photo I could find.)

I poured a Loire cab franc at an event recently and suggested that it would go well with fatty food, some roasted chicken perhaps. Someone asked, “How bout fries?”

I’d never thought about pairing wine with fries! So, I ask you, is it … impossible?!? Hit the comments with your suggestions! And please note whether your wine suggestion considers either ketchup or mustard–or (UPDATE, for European readers) mayo!

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SPIT: Food and wine gone awry
Cabernet and wedding cake, Cabernet and mac n cheese, pulled pork and Burgundy – great comments, and they’re yours! Check out all of the great and wonderful food pairings that knocked your world.

SPIT: the hippocampus!
Wine drinkers have a 10 percent smaller hippocampus than those who drink spirits or beer, researchers say! But I thought “Red wine antioxidants protect hippocampal neurons against ethanol-induced damage“! Ugh, my brain hurts.

SPIT: Chinese wine!
“Millions of Chinese will be disappointed by their first taste of wine” is Jancis Robinson’s assessment of home-grown wines in China. Reporting on a recent trip, she, too, was “disappointed” by the “chemical and occasionally rotten odours” in the wines and general lack of progress with the industry over the past five years. [FT]

SIPPED: Holy wine
In Manchester they may go for Fairtrade wine, but Craig Heffley and Seth Gross of Wine Authorities, a wine retailer in Durham, NC, have another goal in mind for the Duke Chapel: tasty. They plan to start selling a 3L bag-in-box next summer for use in the Eucharist. [Durham News]

SPIT: drinking wine
“The 2006 Insolia from Feudo Principi di Butera…can be pleasurably inhaled for minutes.” Going easy on the hippocampus, was he? [NYT]

SIPPED: understatement
Talk about an impossible food wine pairing! Wine critic and blogger Peter Liem visits a sake festival in Japan and eats live shrimp: “My first two passed complacently, but a third, a female full of salty-sweet roe, twitched a little as I decapitated her with my fingers.” What’s his title for this juicy posting? “Niigata Prefecture.” Tony Bourdain, your job is safe–for now!–until Peter recruits a headline writer from Gawker… [peterliem]

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The good people over at Forbes have assembled a pageview-baiting slide show with some top chefs and foods and wines that made them sing. Not literally, but you get the idea.

So let’s help them out with some content for their next slide show: what’s a particularly memorable food-wine pairing that you thought might work out but went awry, perhaps horrendously? While wine can no doubt conquer any culinary terrain as we have seen in our “impossible food-wine pairings,” there are still some clunkers that knock your world rather than rock it. Take, for example, zinfandel and grilled eggplant, which I paired one day only to the effect of unleashing tannin-on-tannin warfare in my mouth.

Hit the comments with your clunkers and you will be entered into a random drawing to win a prize: a new copy of the comprehensive food pairing book What to Drink with What You Eat, by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg.

Post your comment by Monday to qualify, check back here on Tuesday to see if you were the winner.

From a reader:

So we went nuts and had breakfast for dinner. Poached eggs for the wife, fried eggs for me. Hash browns, turkey bacon. A little tomatillo salsa for me, on the eggs.

Let’s rule out champagne or mimosas. What wine do you have with breakfast, when you’re not eating it in the a.m.?

It’s an interesting question. But I find this pairing to be driven more by what’s on the plate than by the time of day. So why rule out Champagne? It might just make this…possible! Hit the comments with your thoughts!

Image: istockphoto with permission

Although the gray clouds were high in the sky, rain threatened every minute of our cool walk along the trails. After a fun but draining week in Napa last week I welcomed a break with my cousins on Saturday as we walked about five miles over hill and dale (what is a dale?) to reach the beach pictured above in Marin County.

Anyway, after the hike, we stumbled on Small Shed Flatbreads in Mill Valley, a restaurant where the banquette is made from a reclaimed bowling lane–complete with arrows–and the menu has a local and organic focus. I ordered a sweet potato curry soup and we shared various other excellent flatbreads and salads for the table. On a whim, I decided to order a Zardetto Prosecco (find this wine) and it came in a Duralex glass, not a flute, but tasted great and refreshing, cool with its pleasant acidity and faint sweetness.

Prosecco is now my official wine after hikes. A good wine tastes great in the right context.

A couple of nights ago I had one of the storied dishes of Napa Valley. And no, Thomas Keller, I’m talking about the fish tacos at Taylor’s Refresher, a roadside joint in St. Helena!

The horrendously bad cameraphone pic does not to the food justice but it is a piece of grilled mahi mahi, shredded lettuce and a hot sauce that has an arc like a wine, really kicking in on the finish.

Is pairing fish tacos with wine…impossible?!? Hit the comments with your suggestions!