Wine with Curried Goat? No Thank You!

Poetry of Food has gone international this month, adding columnists around the globe, making our collective effort the first true mondial food dispatch in the, um, well, world.

Being the first of anything usually leads to conflict later as this is the nature of being first; for a long while, you make up your own rules. And then, when standards are set, rules made, and ossification of the enterprise takes over, conflict becomes inevitable.

And although Poetry is only a month old, I can already perceive tension at our world headquarters in New York. As Poetry of Food’s wine writer, I was asked to “pen a story about wines that go with Indian, Middle Eastern and Asian cuisines.”

CUT TO IMAGE OF NAPAMAN SLAPPING HIS FOREHEAD AND GROWLING.

THEN CUT TO CLOSE-UP OF THE MEMO NAPAMAN COMPOSES:

I do not fall for the standard patter, as many wine writers do... when their editors give them an assignment to “pair the food of India, Mexico, or Asia.” Most often, they fall back on the cliché that "nothing works better with these foods than a bright white German Riesling."

I used to do this, too. But I got smart. 

After years of exposure to world cuisines and world wines, and having traveled the globe, and cooked with some of the great chefs, I believe that the only thing that goes with the three cuisines named above is BEER. Period. 

Wine is a beverage with roots in Europe. It is meant to complement the foods of Europe (and of America). There is no red, or white, wine that perfectly underscores, and marries to, the flavors, heat, complexity and lingering taste of the foods that come out of the kitchen of the countries named above.

I cannot, in good conscience, tell readers to pair garam masala-flavored foods with a perky white wine from Germany, Austria or Spain. 

There's a reason that Italy’s Sangiovese grape so brilliantly complements tomato-based pasta dishes; the grapes and the tomatoes grow in the same soil. 

There's a reason, too, that light, crisp Rieslings of Germany work so well with the greasy, breaded, fried dishes of that nation -- they naturally complement one another. 

But I have yet to find a wine, which complements goat curry, a black bean burrito, or a spicy Lebanese falafel. 

So don't ask me to write about such a “food-and-wine marriage” because, from my perspective, this would have to be a shotgun wedding.

The irony today in wine circles is that countries like India and China are just becoming huge producers of wine and nations like Israel and Lebanon (I’m thinking of the exceptional Chateau Musar produced here) have long made good wines; but these nations are, in my opinion, producing wines which are meant to complement traditional European/continental/American cuisine, not their respective indigenous cuisines. For which, I heartily maintain, nothing marries better than a BEER.

Do I make my point?