I was in Chicago recently to teach a WSET Level 1 course in which we talked a lot about how and why wine and food go together. The idea of the eight food pairings we explore during the class is to give some real-world illustrations of what, in a book, seems just so much theory. What made the class exercises particularly useful this trip is that after the day’s course, I had a chance to put the examples to the test when I had dinner with a friend at Chicago’s wonderful Aba Restaurant.
Aba serves “Mediterranean Cuisine,” which is something of a generic description of what turns out to be a very complex menu created by chef CJ Jacobson. With many of the dishes carrying Lebanese and Moroccan influences, any given plate is sure to contain a heady variety of spices, some aromatic, some moderately hot, and all of them wonderfully exotic.
Reflecting the menu, beverage director Liz Pearce has assembled a beguiling array of warm-climate wines from the South of France,
Greece, Italy and Spain as well as from the warmer parts of California that so accurately reflect a Mediterranean sensibility. With an emphasis on full-bodied white wines and reds with crisp acidity and softer tannins, Ms. Pearce gives the wine lover a lot of options.
A lovely selection of wines by the glass gives indecisive tables many options among a group of flavorful white wines and low-tannin reds with which to begin. I loved a Domaine Skouras Moscofilero, a white wine that was crisply acidic, vibrantly fruity and had enough body it could stand up to both starters at my table, a plate of hummus with shredded lamb ragu and a dish called Muhammara that combined sweet/tart pomegranate with walnuts and spicy Aleppo pepper. Subtly hot, sweet and even a bit tannic from the walnuts, this dish seemed on paper to be a classic high-risk pairing but the Moschofilero was the ideal foil for it: it had plenty of fruit to counter the chili and the tannin (both of which reduce fruitiness in wine), it had crisp acidity to counter the sweetness of the dish and it had the body to stand up to the complexity of spices. Here, a low-risk wine was the perfect answer to what could have been a pairing quandary. It did equally well, for different reasons, with the rich hummus, with the crisp acidity offsetting the fattiness of the lamb.
Mahammara at Aba
I find it helps to keep in mind the WSET concept of dividing both food and wine into high risk and low risk groupings. Low risk wines go with many things – they generally have lower alcohol, low or non-existent tannins, abundant fruitiness and sometimes a hint of residual sugar. High risk wines are, as you might expect, nearly the opposite: high tannin, high alcohol and very dry. Keep the categories in mind and you may find it easier to navigate around a highly spiced meal.
Having the help of a thoughtful wine guide like Liz Pearce at Aba is a big asset, but you can provide the same skills at home by spending some time exploring wine and food pairings here on the Fine Vintage website!
If you want to visit Aba yourself, here are the details:
Lyn Farmer is a James Beard Award-winning wine and food writer and educator who has been sharing his passion for wine around the world for more than 35 vintages. Lyn holds the WSET Diploma and has been teaching for Fine Vintage for 10 years, sharing not only his keen sense of wine and culture, but an entertaining raconteur sharing stories about wine and wine people around the world.
Lyn is among the most widely traveled and well-regarded wine experts in the United States and, addition to teaching courses in several US cities for Fine Vintage, Ltd, he frequently leads seminars and masterclasses for VinItaly, the Italian Trade Commission, SOPEXA, Comité Champagne and many other wine industry groups. In addition to his WSET Diploma, Lyn is also certified by the Society of Wine Educators and the Sake Education Council and has been an ambassador for both the Champagne region and the Port Wine Institute. He is a member of several honorary trade groups, including the Confraria do Vinho do Porto and l'Ordre des Coteaux de Champagne. Formerly wine and spirits ambassador for Silversea Cruises, he is a widely published writer who served as restaurant critic for two major newspapers and was senior editor of The Wine News magazine for 20 years.
Lyn is also the director of VeritageMiami, a popular wine festival in Miami, Florida that benefits United Way and attracts thousands of wine lovers each year.
