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The Food Pairing Craze: Down The Same Wrong Road As Wine Scores
The current infatuation with wine and food pairings is headed down the same wrong road as wine scores. Why? Because people are genetically unique and so are their taste buds. No two people experience the same smell, the same taste — or the same wine/food pairing exactly the same way.Because of that, it’s unreasonable to expect an individual wine-tasting/food-pairing experience to coincide with those of a set of expert high priests/priestesses who pronounce what is “good” and what is not.
Struggling to find the “right” food/wine combo adds a whole ‘nother' level of insecurity to the wine experience. And that first level of insecurity remains as the primary obstacle to broader consumer acceptance of wine. We’ve seen that wine has recently reached parity with beer as a preferred alcoholic beverage. There are a lot of factors associated with that as are well-studied by the Wine Market Council. A lot has to do with rising income among America’s growing Latino population. That follows the trend that wine consumption increases with income and socioeconomic status.
Some of that growth also comes from Millennials who scorn experts, tasting notes and snobbism. And more support comes from rising set of voices such as Tim Hanni, Gary Vaynerchuk and others who have emphasized and recognized the importance of individual palate variations and spoken out against the elitism that still endures as wine’s most prominent paradigm.
This elitism, this dogmatic insistence on perfect pairing has dominated articles and posts that emphasize education, learn, education, learn … and thus carry the unspoken message that the average wine drinker must study, study, study. Hell, if I faced that level of strenuous effort at the market, I’d go for a Jagged Edge IPA or a Racer 5 any day rather than turn my imbibing experience into sweaty- palm quantum chromodynamics final exam that I arrived for stark naked. In fact, we frequently go for a brew at our meals — especially when we’ve gone through several days in a row when we’ve opened a highly rated bottle of wine and found it unworthy of either the calories or alcohol intake. Some nights we open two or three of these before heading for beer or a reliable wine in the cellar. The average wine consumer does not have a cellar, nor are they likely to persist in one bottle of wine after another.
This whole emphasis on correct coupling discourages individual experimentation and raises the perceived risk quotient … and decreases overall enjoyment of the wine and the food.
And least we forget: constrains wine sales.
Just remember: people do not flock to musicians with perfect pitch. If that were the case, The Fray, Green Day, Gaslight Anthem and Matchbox 20 would be non-starters. On the other hand, they WERE non-starters to the elite music critics. But experimenting with what band you listen to lacks the financial penalty inherent in wine. Attacks on scores and perfect pairings are heresy. They also endanger the raison d’être of experts. For, if scores and perfect pairings are not relevant to average consumers, then what value do vino-gurus bring to the table? Make no mistake, there is a powerful and long-established set of vested interests who will defend the status quo as brutally as wholesalers attack the direct shipment of wine. But in the end, we must honor pleasure. Remember enjoyment? That’s what food and wine are about. Just drink it. Just eat it. Just enjoy it.
What do YOU think?
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