This is lasagna Bolognese. I think that's how you
say it. Real G's move in silence like lasagna
. You, you guys know that. Hey,
I'm Samo, Andre Houston Mac. And I'm gonna
share with you the best tips to pair any meal
with the perfect wine. Choosing the perfect wine to
enhance your meal only can make the meal taste better
. I'm gonna talk about a lot of things today
about like what you're looking for in the dish,
what you're looking for in the wine and what happens
together when they come to like a perfect marriage.
But also you should throw all that out of the
window if you like to drink rum and coke with
your pasta. But for those of you and for
the people who want to drink wine with uh food
and understand better how those two can go together.
That's what today is all about. All right,
let's bring out the first dish. I don't know
why I did that. I don't know. I
was, I was watching some wrestling last night.
This is carbonara. I know this dish all too
. Well, a favorite in my, in my
household. I generally eat it cold. I eat
the leftovers off my kids' plates on the table.
You have the smokiness from the meat. You have
a thick pasta, you have a creamy egg sauce
and there's some cheese there. You know, you
have to have some, some memory here of like
what things taste like. If you can just think
about all of those flavors, then you can translate
it into what you would like to drink. Generally
when I start, I try to do the whole
bite, you know, like a perfect bite,
but I might come in and like dab a little
bit on the sauce. We have a little bit
of pasta, some Guoli here and a little bit
of sauce. So Guoli really salty chewy. There's
a crunchy texture to it. Uh kind of lovely
offset to like this bouncy chew that you get from
the rico toi. It's got this creaminess to it
. Lots of pepper, right? So like on
the finish, I feel like the pepper is kind
of lingering. I'm looking for something that has a
little bit of acid in it to kind of help
cut through the richness of that or something with a
little bit of fruit on it to kind of cut
through the, you know, the saltiness of it
. Right. Resetting your palate back to zero.
It's the best way to explain palate fatigue, right
? You chew a piece of gum for 45 minutes
and then all of a sudden you realize that the
gum has no taste anymore. If you take that
piece of gum out, maybe you put it on
the side of a plate, you talk for 30
or 40 minutes again and then you realize that the
, the gum is there and you pop it right
back in your mouth and like magic, it has
some flavor, it's not as flavorful as it was
when it first started. But there is some flavor
there to have a break in that and have a
glass of wine that kind of helps cleanse the palate
, right? To help you set up for the
next bite. Um To me, I think that's
what food and wine pairing is about. Also just
when you look at food and wine pairing, you
can either compare or contrast comparing means pear, like
with like and then contrasting where it's like with not
like. So it's like a creamy sauce with,
you know, something a little bit more linear uh
high acid that kind of help penetrate the richness of
the sauce. So I'm thinking of a red wine
, high acid that has some earthy characteristics to it
, but also has some fruit. So maybe a
red wine newer release vintage here we have the Chianti
Chianti is actually a place in Italy and the main
grape here is sand, which is a high acid
red grape, I think pairs perfectly with this particular
dish. It has all the qualities that we talked
about pretty youthful fruit forward as the wine starts to
age, it loses some of its youthfulness in that
sense of the fruit starts to fade. And so
you don't get a lot of the freshness that I
would like to think of that would pair well with
this dish medium bodied, a lot more fruit,
but the size of my tongue are tingling, which
means that the wine is high acid and I think
I'm ready for another bite. So, you know
, all the saltiness and the cheese that I have
at the end, you know, kind of really
kind of dissipate and like it's like, OK,
I'm ready for the next bite and experience the dish
, you know, like it's brand new. This
is Longoria Pesto pasta. This is a trophy pasta
here with a genovese style pesto which is pine nuts
, Parmesan basil, olive oil pecorino and a little
bit of cheese on top. I would steer away
from full body red wines here. I think it
would kind of just wipe out a lot of the
freshness and the greenness and the and the beauty of
this dish definitely get like basil, it's grassy,
it feels very green. Generally, when I think
about highly aromatic dishes, something like this, you
know, I want to wine to kind of mimic
the same things, right? I'm looking for a
wine with acid acid is an amplifier. The reason
why you put salt on a dish is to really
kind of heighten and bring out the flavors of a
dish. This is comparing like with like, so
we want a wine that will mimic the style of
this dish. To me. I think when you
match like with like and and they connect, it
sets the resets the palate back to zero. How
do you choose styles, you know, a food
wine parent if you want to do like with like
or to do contrast? really think about the flavors
in that dish, right? And start to go
over in your head. You know, this is
what it's going to taste like. And I think
that's an exercise that can help you in the future
in selecting wine. I think I'm gonna gravitate Tobiano
de Abruzzo. So this is an Italian white wine
here that embodies a lot of those attributes that we
talked about high acid light to medium body, grassy
notes very aromatic floral and has some pretty decent acidity
. Generally speaking, in a restaurant setting, there's
going to be someone there that knows something about the
wine list there. You can say what you're looking
for, right? Like you went through the dish
, you mentally, you went through and you said
, well, you know, I would like to
try something that's like comedian body white wine that has
some freshness to it. And that's one way to
kind of hedge your bet. This is lasagna Bose
. I think that's how you say it sheets of
pasta bolognese I believe is ground beef pork and veal
. So there is a little bit of meat in
the sauce here. This is the best milk sauce
when I think it's anything that's dense and heavy.
I'm thinking of richer style wine, a wine that's
full of bodied. Uh and that could be from
grape skins that could be from where it's grown.
And also that could be from cannons if we're thinking
of a wine that spends quite a bit of time
in and uh in oak, anything grown in a
warmer region, uh Generally those wines tend to be
riper fuller body. Uh And that's what I'm thinking
about when I'm thinking about dense food. Now,
we can go on the opposite side. You know
, when I think about lasagna, I could do
a chart which is basically a white wine that's treated
like a red wine. It spends lots of time
in oak, a very rich from a warm region
. Chardonnay, I think can also be a great
pairing for this particular dish. First impression is like
this sauce that's cooked down, you know, there's
a meatiness to it, stewed tomatoes. Uh And
then you have like cheese that comes in, that's
kind of gooey chewing down on the pasta. Um
This gives you lots of texture, man. I'm
thinking like big old red here. This is like
, you know, a comfort dish in the heart
of the winner. If you have a fireplace or
a fake one. On your TV. It's on
right. And you're drinking, you know, a
great red wine with this something that kind of warms
you up in the inside. So a little,
you know, higher on the scale of the alcohol
scale, just like, you know, just kind
of like a big hug. So I selected the
Barbera Alba from Italy. It's just like an easy
drinking fruit forward style wine that I think that would
be served well with this dish. Now, when
I say easy drinking, I mean, the wine
is not high in tannin. It doesn't need to
spend a lot of time in the bottle to age
for those kind of tannins to to mellow out and
also makes the price a approachable. Ah It smells
amazing right off the bat. I'm getting um licorice
black licorice, a strawberry tart cherry, a slight
kind of peppery note to it. Just very,
very subtle, ripe, fun decent acidity. But
I think like the fruitiness kind is really gonna help
with like this kind of rich dich texture that we
have here. Texture wise. I feel like the
body matches up acid is like great for like the
saltiness of the cheese. You know, I think
most people sit down and say I have this beautiful
lasagna here and I have one of my favorite wines
. No matter where it is from in the world
, it's red and I'm eating them together. What
could be better than that. And to be honest
with you, nothing can be better than that in
your mind. If that's what tastes great to you
, I think here trying to find the right wine
and the right balance just kind of takes the experience
to the next level. This looks like spaghetti and
clams. All the clams are open. That's a
good thing. A white sauce made with white wine
. The clam juice. So the briny juices from
the clams, a little garlic parsley and chili flakes
. Yeah, I think the first thing I get
is the brininess from the clams. So it's kind
of like this waft of the ocean. Then there's
the freshness of greens and herbs and then like right
at the end, it's like this hint of heat
from the chili flakes. Biggest target is the aromas
here, I smell the ocean. Um I'm thinking
of a wine that would kind of mimic that a
breeziness to it, an airiness to it, that
a freshness to it that I get something that's mineral
driven. Believe this dish is from Campania. So
Campane is on the west coast of Italy. But
when we talk about coastal wines, these are wines
that are grown on the coast of a region,
but that coastal influence, you know, kind of
really helps like giving these wines of brightness and the
freshness to them. Very hot days growing the fruit
. But also you need cool nights to kind of
really help the grapes like maintain some acidity. And
that's really what you're looking for when you're talking about
food and wine pairing, like wine that has some
acid. Maybe here I would even look for regional
pairing and that sense of, you know, just
kind of going through my mental rolodex to figure out
like, you know, is there something on the
wine list that comes from this Campagna area? And
here I want to select the fin and this is
2021. So, Fein is the grape. This
grape is indigenous to lots of parts of Italy,
but it is grown in the area of little stone
fruit, little mirabile plums, peaches, seashell,
salty water. There's a little bit of like nuttiness
to it and then there's like slate salty rock if
you will, the things that I that I was
looking for minerality acid, it has those but there
is a tinge of the ocean of seafood. There's
a ripeness of fruits at the tail end that I
think that kind of match up, you know,
perfectly with the heat of the chili flakes. If
you served a wine that was too sweet with this
dish, the seafood, the brininess with sweet kind
of would kind of be funky. That's the one
that's a good parent. So the next dish is
or with sausage and broccoli rob or I think means
ear. I don't know why I know that.
I think one of my kids told me that it's
kind of shaped like an ear. This is probably
one of my favorite ones. There's lots of different
flavors in this dish. Big flavors too. Like
, so you have Italian hot sausage that's gonna bring
the heat. Even just the Sprinkle of chili flakes
brings the heat. Broccoli rab. Very fresh grassy
earthy. Porky, spicy definitely is a little something
sweet to the sausage as well, which I,
which I kind of like the urines and greenness of
, of the broccoli robb. It's funny, I
really wanted to go red wine here, but I
really feel like that this could be somewhere in the
middle of the road of that. The most flavorful
thing in this dish is the sausage in general.
When you're looking at spicy food, you tend to
want to lead on uh something that has riper fruit
and I E sweet. So maybe a low alcohol
reason, the kind of foil or attack the the
the spiciness. So if we went in here with
a high alcohol wine, high alcohol wine and spicy
tends to be not good. All it does is
it accentuates the heat in your mouth so it just
makes it hotter broccoli rub. So you think about
bitter greens Grassy Notes, but I think bitter is
the biggest component there. And so when I think
about bitter stuff, I'm thinking something that has a
little bit more riper fruit. I wanna say fruit
forward style wines. What I'm saying is I'm not
saying wines that are sweet, but they have this
perception of sweetness because there's riper fruit. And I
think that always tends to work here. Generally speaking
, wines that are from the new world, the
United States, North America, South America Australia,
those tend to be fruit forward style wines where they
leave mainly with fruit, old war wines, things
from Europe and stuff like that. Those wines tend
to leave more with savory notes. I think for
this dish for me, you know what I would
love and think that go well with. This is
something that, you know, maybe a little bit
unconventional. It's not a red wine and it's not
a white wine. I'm actually picking something a little
bit in the middle and this is a rose from
the United States from California. This is Edmund ST
John and this is called Bone Jolly and this is
their rose. All of the things that I'm looking
for the fruitiness and, and those things of red
wine redberry notes and stuff like that. It will
have a little bit of tandem because of the skin
. I get that in this package in a rose
. But also I get that kind of refreshing of
like it being served chill and this kind of lightness
that you would get through a white wine. And
I think this would go perfectly with this dish.
A little bit of rhubarb strawberry like a tartness of
a raspberry. I'm gonna say asphalt like uh walking
over a freshly paved, like, uh, roadway
. The sausage kind of has a, you know
, it's got some fat in it. So it's
really kind of coating my tongue and there it's all
the heat at the end and that's what I'm talking
about at the end. No heat, heat's all
gone. Palate's pretty clean. You know, it's
that whole thing of like having the first bite tastes
as good as the last bite. I think that's
why our food and wine parent work great. Um
because it just sets you back to zero and right
at the beginning, I think your taste and your
preferences supersede anything that I said today, these are
some guidelines to like hone your palate and like,
you know, experience food and wine at a different
level. And for those who want to, I
think just giving a little bit more care and thought
about it can only benefit you in your own experience
. Uh And that's really truly what we're talking about
, right? This is about about you food and
wine. So yeast come around and they eat sugar
up and then they kind of poop out alcohol,
right? I feel like I was explaining to my 00:13:11.340 --> kid.