You Can Have Your Wine and Eat It, Too

There's a surefire secret to creating synergy between a dish of food and a glass of wine: Make sure the same wine is in each.

Some of the greatest wine and food pairings in history are based on that principle. For example, boeuf bourguignon (beef braised in red wine) served with red Burgundy is what we consider a holy grail pairing that all food lovers should experience at least once. Whether it's boeuf bourguignon or coq au vin, when the same wine used for slow-cooking the protein also ends up in your glass accompanying the dish, it creates a natural bridge between the two.

Of course, cooking changes a wine's flavor: As it heats up and alcohol evaporates, the flavors intensify. Beware of cooking with wines that are already high in acid; concentrated acidity can prove overwhelming. When you start with a wine that is smooth and fruity, the results can be divine.

Case in point: Inspired by the excellent book "Perfect Pairings: A Master Sommelier's Practical Advice for Partnering Wine With Food," by Evan Goldstein (with recipes by his mother, San Francisco chef Joyce Goldstein), we recently made a Swiss-style cheese fondue. Slowly melting a pound of Gruyere over a double boiler with one cup of Gewürztraminer, we thickened it with a teaspoon of cornstarch and flavored it with a clove of garlic plus pinches of nutmeg and white pepper. As we dipped cubes of bread into the fondue, we sipped the remaining four glasses of the wine and savored the experience of the same round, fruity flavors in the cheese and in our glass.

With the fondue, our wine of choice was a 2005 Hugel et Fils Gewürztraminer ($19), a deliciously rich, full-bodied white with pear and litchi fruitiness and notes of ginger and cinnamon that is Andrew's pick this week. Anyone who enjoys dipping apples into cheese fondue would find this wine especially refreshing with their next potful. Keep an eye out for the 2006 vintage ($24), which is just starting to hit wine store shelves.

With Karen's pick, the rich and velvety 2006 Wente Vineyards Riva Ranch Chardonnay ($18), Wente executive chef Jerry Regester recommends serving caramelized scallops with mushroom risotto. Playing off that idea, Andrew decided to test seared scallops with two butter sauces he made using two different wines. One was the Wente chardonnay. The other was the lighter and crisp-as-an-apple 2006 Domaine de la Quilla Sevre et Maine Muscadet ($12). Both wines are aged "sur lie" (on the lees, or yeast and grape sediment) for eight months, when they pick up their creamy textures and complex flavors. Reducing the wines emphasized the chardonnay's light lemon and vanilla flavors and the Muscadet's herbal, almost grassy notes. Again, each version of the scallops showed a remarkable affinity for glasses of the wine it contained, which became even more evident when tasting the two against each other.

For better pairings, consider incorporating wine at any point in the cooking process:

Before, marinate meats in wine-based marinades, which serve to soften tough meat fibers as they add flavor.

During, poach fish in white wine broth, braise red meats in red wine sauce, stew fruit in sweet wine.

After, deglaze the cooking pan with wine and a little stock to create a sauce to pour over the dish.

Knowing to add a dash of the wine you're drinking to a dish can be helpful even if you don't cook: In restaurants, when we've found ourselves up against a less-than-optimal pairing, one of us has dribbled a bit of the wine we're drinking into a sauced dish to help the match along. (Don't add too much, because the alcohol isn't cooked off and can overpower the food.)

The other night, we ordered dinner in: mussels in green curry. Before it arrived, Andrew reduced one-third cup each of two New Zealand sauvignon blancs that we chose for their tropical-fruit profile, which pairs well with mussels and spicy Thai flavors. The green curry was split into two batches, and each was spiked with a couple of tablespoons of one of the reduced wines. When we tasted each version with its respective wine, food and drink seemed magically to melt into one another.

For the aforementioned mussels, reducing the 2005 Brancott Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($10) concentrated its green- mango-dominant tropical-fruit flavors, which played beautifully off the coconut-milk-based curry. Reducing the lemon- and grapefruit-dominant 2006 House of Nobilo Icon Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc ($20) brought out its herbal notes and minerality, which played off the brininess of the mussels. Our biggest surprise was seeing how even when pairing similar wines with such a spicy dish, the subtle differences became more evident through this treatment.

You can always tell when you hit upon a wonderful wine and food pairing, because it fills the space between the two. When you can find a way to add a splash of whatever is in your glass to what you're eating, not only does that space disappear, but an entirely new flavor experience replaces it.

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