We had the great pleasure recently of participating in the Dungeness Crab and Seafood Festival in Port Angeles. I gave a presentation on pairing wine with Dungeness crab, which, I have to admit, was a lot more fun than I had initially anticipated. Frankly, I was a little nervous about pulling it off — not the pairing, but the actual mechanics of distributing dixie cups of wine and crab salad to a crowd perched on fold-up rental chairs while engaging the audience with my schpeal. Alas, with the help of Sarah Baxter-Cronauer and her husband, Paul, owners of Wine on the Waterfront, a killer wine bar right on the water in downtown Port Angeles, I pulled it off.
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Chris prepared a delicious crab salad (here’s the recipe) and some tasty mini crab cakes, and we came up with two good pairings and two not-so-good pairings. The point of the sucky pairings was to illustrate how food can ruin perfectly good wine and vise versa. For the white pairings, we chose a beautiful riesling from the Nahe region of Germany and a Chardonnay from Carneros, an area that straddles Napa and Sonoma County. The riesling won this battle due to it’s bracing acidity. The Chardonnay, though well made, got lost in the crab salad, while the racy Riesling cut through the richness of the crab, contributing notes of yellow plum and candied lemon, both of which worked really nicely with the preserved lemon in the salad.
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The reds were trickier because tannin typically does not mix well with shellfish. Tannins tend to make shellfish taste metallic (don’t think of biting down on tin foil. Aww, you did, didn’t you?). The preparation of the crab in this instance ( the crab cakes were pan fried in oil) actually helped the pairing; frying the crab changes it’s chemical structure, makes it less . . . well, crabby. We chose two fruit-forward wines, one low in tannin (Beaujolais) and reletively high in acid, and one high in tannin (Auzie Shiraz) without much acid. Beaujolais wins!
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The other point of the pairings was to show off the quality of two wines that are still suffering their unsavory reputations in the American market. Though there is a Riesling renaissance in effect, particularly in New York State, Washington State and Oregon, too many Americans still associate German riesling with the nasty stuff that comes in a blue bottle. Americans prefer easy-to-read labels, and German labels typically ain’t easy to read (see below). For riesling fans like Chris and me, that’s not a problem; due to the lack of demand, we can still afford to drink some of the world’s greatest white wines.
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Beaujolais’ rep has been maligned by (among other historical occurances such as the Duke of Burgundy proclaiming Gamay noir unfit for human consumption) a party called Beaujolais Nouveau that it’s biggest producer and promoter, Georges Duboeuf, has flung across the planet. Don’t get me wrong, I love a party, and Beaujolais Nouveau is always a hell of a party, but it causes the unfortunate association of all Beaujolais with the simple, sometimes dreadful, stuff you gurgle on the third Thursday of every November. Beaujolais can, in fact, be quite serious, and can be marvelously appropriate at the dinner table; it’s low tannins, high acidity and, in the best cases, fresh, vibrant fruit give it great versatility. In the north of Beaujolais, there are ten vineyards, known as the cru, that sit on granitic soils and produce the best and most serious Gamay Noir. They are typically just slightly more expensive than regular ol’ Beaujolais, and are well worth the extra bucks. Look for these vineyards on the label: St. Amour, Julienas, Chenas, Moulin-a-Vent, Morgon, Chiroubles, Fleurie, Regnie, Brouilly and Cote de Brouilly.
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We are proud to report that most everyone enjoyed the pairings, and a few even appreciated the thumbs-down pairings more than the thumbs-up, which is precisely the point: you chose what works best for you, not us. We merely suggest what works best for us. Feel free to give ‘er a whirl at home — here are the wines and a link to the recipe:
2007 Hexamer Meddersheimer Rheingrafenberg Riesling Quarzit, Nahe, Germany
2007 Saintsbury Chardonnay Carneros, Napa, California
2007 Chateau Thivan Cote de Brouilly, Beajolais, France
2007 Rutherglen Red (Shiraz), Rutherglen, Victoria, Australia