By Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
Wednesday, July 25, 2007

"Xylophone," in addition to being one of the highest-point Scrabble words we can think of, is a useful analogy for thinking about wine and food pairing -- and for organizing your own wine and burger tasting this summer.

Before sitting down to taste, arrange your wines in a manner inspired by the percussion instrument of graduated wooden bars: from light-bodied to full-bodied, using the wine's alcohol level (low to high) as an estimate. When taste-testing wines of similar alcohol levels, you might line them up by color (yellow to pink to red), which can suggest a crescendo of flavor intensity.

Either way, it's then easier to make generalizations about the styles of wine you enjoy best with certain foods: often lighter wines with lighter foods, and fuller-bodied and -flavored wines with heavier foods.

Prepare a tasting sheet for taking notes. Listing the wines down one side of the page and the foods across the other, create a simple grid. Into each of the boxes, note your impression of each pairing using a five-point scale, from +2 (perfect) to 0 (neutral) to -2 (awful). After a few glasses of wine, you might skip numbers in favor of smiley or sad faces, a technique we learned from restaurateur Danny Meyer: The broader the smile or frown, the more intense the judgment.

Our "wine xylophone" this week consisted of four wines representing a range of styles: 1) 2005 Wild Horse Central Coast Chardonnay ($17), an oaked wine dominated by pear with notes of vanilla; 2) 2006 Etude Carneros Pinot Noir Rosé ($20), a crisp and elegant pale pink rosé oozing strawberries; 3) 2005 Les Jamelles Vins de Pays d'Oc Pinot Noir ($10), a wine rich with black cherries and blackberries, and beautifully balanced by tannin; and 4) 2003 El Coto Rioja Crianza ($13), whose deep blackberry flavors are given structure by tannin and mystery by a hint of smoke.

We tasted each against a "burger xylophone": 1) a lean turkey burger, half with mayonnaise and half with ketchup and mustard; 2) a rare tuna burger; 3) a veggie burger, heavy with root vegetables and wild rice; and 4) a traditional (beef) bacon cheeseburger.

Although we've had as many as a dozen wines fall flat during other tastings, this time we lucked out, with four out of four winners. Our favorite of the quartet was the stunning Etude Rosé, which turned out to be the most versatile as well. An elegant summer sipper as a soloist, it also performed a delicious duet with each of the four burgers (+1 or +2).

The quality-to-price ratio made the Les Jamelles pinot noir the best deal of the night. It also turned out to be the second-most versatile wine, pairing well (+1 or +2) with all of the burgers except the turkey, which it overpowered (0).

The delicious El Coto Rioja Crianza achieved our highest pairing rating (+2, and a big, broad smile) with the bacon cheeseburger, as did the Wild Horse chardonnay with the mayo-laden turkey burger and even the tuna burger.

Afterward, we couldn't resist turning to several industry pros for some of their own favorite wine-and-burger pairings. Our first stop was Gordon Leigh, managing director of the Capital Grille in Tysons Corner; the upscale chain's burger was rated No. 1 in a 2006 Consumer Reports reader survey and rated "excellent" by the magazine's expert panel.

Leigh likes his burgers with the works (cheese, bacon, onions and even jalapeños), which leads him to a classic southern Rhone red such as a 2001 Delas Haute Pierre Chateauneuf du Pape ($30) or, minus the chilies, to one of the deliciously meaty red zinfandels from California's Edmeades Winery.

With the Capital Grille's lobster and crab burger, Leigh is partial to 2005 Villa Mt. Eden Grand Reserve Chardonnay ($12), a "rich and creamy" wine that serves as a "simile" to this sophisticated seafood burger. With vegans and vegetarians among his relatives, Leigh knows to pair veggie burgers with a 2005 Louis Jadot Beaujolais-Villages ("with red pepper-, tomato- or cheese-based burgers," $11) or a 2005 Conundrum ("with spinach-, mushroom- or potato-based burgers," $27).

Sebastian Zutant, sommelier of the new wine-themed restaurant Proof, loves lamb burgers in the summer, especially when paired with a 2004 Frederic Magnien Bourgogne Hautes-Cotes de Nuit ($20). "The pinot noir-based wine has a gamy, funky nose and deep animale flavor that plays off the same gaminess of the lamb," he told us.

Cafe Atlantico sommelier Jill Zimorski's passion for this pairing led her to interrupt her birthday week festivities to e-mail us about her favorite burger wine: a 2004 Majella Sparkling Shiraz ($28). "With a regular ol' beef burger, I like something a little left of center," she wrote. "The spice and structure of the shiraz comes through and, along with the effervescence, is a nice balance to the fatty, juicy burger and grilled flavor." Served chilled, the shiraz is "cold and refreshing."

With virtually any burger you encounter this summer, one of this week's wines is bound to create the perfect harmony.

Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page, award-winning authors of "What to Drink With What You Eat," can be reached through their Web site,http://www.becomingachef.com, or atfood@washpost.com.