Turkey and trimmings have long taken centre stage at Christmas, but the wine is just as important
Holidays are about rituals: festive routines repeated year after year—so often we have long forgotten their origins. As a wine writer, one of my annual practices has been trying out novel takes on holiday food and wine pairing, itself a series of rituals with unfamiliar origins that can, with a little delving, begin to seem increasingly arbitrary.
A masterclass led by my fellow Master of Wine Tim Hanni, a man with a mile-wide contrarian streak, underlined this point. For one thing, what we consider “traditional pairing” is actually a fairly modern concept, even in France. For instance, the Larousse Gastronomique contained no food and wine pairing guidance until 1961 (hardly the hallowed days of old…).
At this point, Tim said, “the BS began to overtake the science,” resulting in constantly evolving “rules.” Today we recite the adage about dry white with fish, red with meat and sweet with sweet as if it were the 11th commandment.
Back in the ‘60s, fish was served with Sauternes and desserts with Ermitage Blanc or Montrachet.
A second point is that the wines of today differ wildly from those of yesteryear. Sancerre, the quintessential “dry white” of today, used to be sweet. Champagne too was much sweeter. The Montrachet referenced in the Larousse was actually a botrytized sweet wine.
However, though specific pairing recommendations may be poorly equipped to stand the test of time, Tim conceded that certain sensory realities persist. Simply put, some food elements like sweetness and umami are pretty tough on wine, while others like salt and acid tend to cast it in a flattering light. Because most holiday feasts fall firmly on the sweet end of the spectrum, anyone wondering why the Grand Cru they have lovingly saved for Christmas lunch tastes sour and flat should heed Tim’s sage words: “if the food is sweeter than the wine, it will probably suck.”
I should confess that I’m not a big sweet wine drinker and normally prioritise dental and metabolic health over the promise of pairing bliss, but in the case of most holiday meals, I feel that adding a sweet beverage or two is hardly going to be the straw that gave the camel diabetes.