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Turkey of the Sea

If the word “Thanksgiving” doesn’t conjure up pictures of swordfish prepared in a tomato sauce with fennel and hot pepper and served with spaghetti, you’re probably not alone. But since we’ve just concluded our TableWine Challenge, which asked readers to prepare this dish and find the perfect wine to go with it, we’re devoting this feature to the contest. (If you’re looking for wine recommendations for traditional Thanksgiving fare, I suggest you check out our earlier features like Mission Impossible: Red Wine for Thanksgiving or What to Serve with Turkey. Both contain plenty of great wines that should suitably complement your holiday table. Just look for more recent vintages.)

Food and wine pairing can sometimes be intimidating. For years, we heard “reds with red meat and whites with fish and poultry.” And for the most part, this dictum still works. Heavy reds like Cabernet Sauvignon or Zinfandel go great with steak and lamb; the meat seems to tame the wine’s tannins while the wine enhances the meat’s flavor. Fish or poultry, on the other hand, when simply prepared typically require a lighter wine, like a Sauvignon Blanc or Riesling, to complement and enhance their flavors with herbaceous, floral, or citrus notes and good acidity.

But with today’s eclectic food tastes and more adventuresome menus, our older rules might need some updating. Appetizers and main courses often reflect the influence of two or more ethnic cuisines, such as pot roast with shitake mushrooms, pork loin with mango and cilantro salsa, or sea bass with a balsamic vinegar sauce. Even simple dishes like mashed potatoes are now often laced with roasted garlic.

Fortunately, the supply of wines from the major wine producing countries has been increasing not only in quantity and quality, but in variety as well. On Italian wine lists, for example, old standbys like Soave and Pinot Grigio are often found accompanied by Arneis or Greco di Tufo. French Bordeaux and Burgundy are competing for attention—and value—with more obscure wines from the Languedoc. Varietals like Malbec from Argentina or Shiraz from Australia, once known only to the cognoscenti, are now frequently “Buys of the Week” at local retailers. This vast selection of wines makes finding just the right wine either for a dish layered with different flavors, like our swordfish pasta, or for a menu comprised of courses with conflicting tastes, like Thanksgiving Dinner, a little easier provided we keep a few basic principles in mind.

Consider the weight of the dish. We’re not talking about calories here, but rather about the robustness or delicacy of the ingredients and the preparation. Heavier foods fare better with heavy wines. For example, roasts, stews, and even chops tend to shine when paired with heavy, full bodied wines like Cabernets and Rhone wines. Simple, light-bodied dishes like chicken breasts, flounder fillets, or sea food do better with lighter whites like Rieslings, Muscadets, or Sauvignon Blancs. Grilled salmon, because of its fatty quality, goes better, in my opinion, with a medium bodied Pinot Noir, and pork chops might do well with a fuller bodied Pinot Blanc or medium bodied Dolcetto D’Alba. These wines work well because they cut through the fats and bring out the flavors in the food.
Consider the sauce. Think about the ingredients, the texture, the herbs and spices. Creamy white sauces generally call for fruitier whites, with good acidity, like Vouvray, Viognier, or Chenin Blanc. These fuller flavored wines enhance the sauce, while their acidity helps cut through the fat. Sweet sauces and relishes do better with crisper, more acidic wines like Rieslings or Sauvignon Blancs to provide a counterpoint and enhance the flavor of the underlying dish. Spicy sauces, on the other hand, do better with spicier wines like Zinfandels or Rhone-style wines for reds or Gewurztraminers and even Tokay-Pinot Gris for whites.
Consider basic tastes like salty, acidic or sweet. Salty dishes don’t do well with tannic wines. The salt just accentuates the bitter, puckery tannins. For example, a baked ham or sliced prosciutto would be wonderful with a fruity white like a Viognier, or with a dry Cabernet Franc, which is relatively low in tannin. Some salty foods go extremely well with sweet wines like Roquefort with Sauternes. More often than not, acidic foods (or dishes with acidic sauces) should be matched with acidic wines and sweet foods with sweet wines.

One of the best books on the subject of food and wine matching, and one on which I always rely, is Joanna Simon’s Wine with Food. Not only does it explain the basic principles of wine and food matching, but its final chapter is a handy reference guide arranged alphabetically recommending foods to go with wines and then wines to go with foods. It’s a great starting point.

These principles seem to have been validated by the wines that stood up best to the swordfish recipe used in our challenge. We found that the most successful wines were the ones chosen to match the fattiness of the swordfish, the acidity of the tomato sauce, and the spice of the fennel.

Our first choice was a Pinot Grigio that had adequate acidity not only to match the acidity in the tomato sauce and cut through the fat of the swordfish, but also to bring out the fennel, red pepper, and parsley in the sauce. Our second choice was a Nebbiolo that had adequate acidity to stand up to the sauce, but also sufficient tannin to accentuate the fennel and red pepper in the dish.

So even if swordfish won’t be on your table this Thanksgiving, you might still use some of these guidelines when looking for wines to go with that other, more traditional, turkey.

Before going to our tasting notes, we’d like to thank all those readers who submitted entries. We hope that the challenge was both fun and rewarding for them. We would also like to thank the Internet’s Food Maven, Arthur Schwartz, for contributing the challenging recipe. Our two winners, who will receive a TableWine t-shirt and Arthur Schwartz's Naples at Table, are:

Neil Platt for Best Wine Recommendation
C. Bongard for Best Account of the Dinner

From the entries posted on our Forum, we selected the eleven wines that we thought would go best with the dish. When we were unable to find the specific wine or vintage, we attempted to locate a close match. We tasted and evaluated each of the wines on their own and then together with the pasta. We started with the whites and then moved on to the reds.

1997 Suter of Argentina, White Torrontés , San Rafael-Mendoza ($9.99)

Pale gold in color with a touch of green, this wine has a lovely nose of apple, lemon and some herbaceousness. On entry, it’s crisp and very dry with good acidity. It delivers pleasant vanilla and almond flavors. Somewhat unctuous on the palate, it has a nice finish with vanilla notes. Although quite good by itself, we found it to be too sour when tasted with the fish. Imported by Argen Wine Imports Ltd., Baltimore, MD.

1999 Sartarelli, Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico, DOC ($9.99)

Pale straw in color, this wine has a direct and forward nose of pear together with some hints of apple. On the palate, it’s smooth. Fruity yet dry, it delivers pear flavors with some butter notes. The finish is quite dry. Some tasted cork on the finish as well. We found this wine too sweet for the fish. Imported by Vias Imports, New York, NY.

The Challenge Winner based on a recommendation from Neil Platt

1998 Livio Zorzettig, Pinot Grigio Colli Orientali del Friuli DOC ($11.99)

Pale gold in color, this wine has a distinctive and pretty lemon citrus nose with hints of vanilla and chalk. Rich and unctuous on the palate, it’s packed with citrus and butter-like flavors along with good acidity. It also has a nice mid-palate. The finish is long, with crisp green apple notes. This wine was the clear winner with the food. Its crispness brought out the flavors of both the fennel and the fish. It supported the dish beautifully, but never competed with it. Imported by Wm. Grant & Sons, New York, NY.

1999 Sauvion, Vouvray ($9.99)

Pale, almost clear, and translucent in color, this wine has a huge almond nose with hints of fruit blossoms and buttered toast. Crisp and big on the palate, it delivers loads of almond and rock candy flavors along with some apple notes. The flavors linger and there’s some almond on the finish. A textbook Vouvray, and definitely one of the stars of the individual tasting. Unfortunately, this wine was too sweet for the dish and, for us, did not work at all.

1999 Oxford Landing, Viognier, Yalumba Limited Release, South Australia ($11.99)

Pale gold in color with greenish hues, this wine has a huge nose of lime and citrus with some lactic undertones. On the palate, it’s big and weighty and packed with lemon and butter flavors, along with some crisp apple. It’s well structured with good acidity. Lime characterizes its long finish. Although a wonderful wine on its own, we thought that this wine competed with the dish by contrast. For the fish, it was a little too bright. Imported by Negociants U.S.A. Inc., Napa, CA.

1997 Murphy-Goode, Reserve Fumé, Alexander Valley ($16.99)

Gold in color, this wine has a big oak and vanilla nose together with some hints of almond. On the palate, it’s buttery with flavors of bosc pear and baking spices. This is a big wine with a good mid palate. Nicely structured with good acidity, it has a spicy finish with oak notes. It’s an outstanding example of California Sauvignon Blanc. This wine went quite well with the fish.

1999 Farnese, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, DOC ($5.99)

Deep ruby in color, this wine has good legs. The nose is earthy and fruity, with hints of raspberry. Very dry and medium bodied, it has the flavor of sour Morello cherries. Not at all complex and a tad short on the finish that has some hints of chalk, this is nonetheless a pleasant and enjoyable wine. We found it too sour, however, with the fish.

The Challenge Runner-Up based on a recommendation from Sue

1997 Matteo Correggia, Roero, DOC ($14.99)

Garnet in color, this Nebbiolo-based wine has beautiful legs. The nose is complex and rich with burnt sugar, minerals, and black cherry. On the palate, the wine is dry, medium bodied and delivers plenty of tobacco and cherry flavors that seem to linger. “Gorgeous,” remarked one taster. Well structured, with fruit and mild tannins in good balance, this wine has a nice finish with tobacco notes. This wine was our choice for second place with the food. It seemed to highlight the different flavor components in the dish like an expertly handled spotlight on Broadway. Imported by Michael Skurnik Wine, Syosset, NY.

1997 Chateau Grande Cassagne, Costières de Nîmes ($13.99)

Ruby in color with huge legs, this wine has a big bright complex nose of red cherries and earth. Medium bodied with good acidity and almost no tannin, there’s plenty of good blue-plum fruit flavor. The finish is a little short with hints of spice and cherry. This wine, though wonderful on its own, was too competitive with the fish. Imported by Robert Kacher Selections, Washington, DC.

1996 Briego, Crianza, Ribera del Duero ($17.99)

Deep dark and opaque ruby in color, this wine has beautiful legs. The nose is huge and smoky with notes of currants and dried apricot. On entry, this is a big wine. Rich on the palate, with surprisingly mild tannins, its flavors are characterized by burnt sugar and toast, with some pomegranate notes. The flavors linger. It has a good finish with some spice and some ash. This wine was our second place red with the fish. It complemented the food well. A “red lover’s wine,” remarked one taster. Imported by Admiral Wine Imports, Irvington, NJ.

1997 Peter Lehman, Shiraz, The Barossa, Barossa ($14.99)

Deep, deep ruby in color with long legs, this wine has a simple and straightforward plum nose. On the palate, it delivers loads of plum and chocolate flavors that linger. Rich and well structured with extremely mild tannins, it has a tart fruit flavor finish. Another wine that was enjoyable by itself, but just too powerful for the fish. Imported by Appellation Imports LLC., Annapolis Junction, MD.

Be sure to read our winners' entries in the TableWine Forum.

TableWine is a personal website and does not sell any wine. However, many of the wines we review are purchased from our local wine merchant, Wine & Spirit World. Their web site may help you locate a good number of our selections. Also, if your local wine store does not carry a wine that you've read about here, don't hesitate to ask them to order a bottle or two for you. For imported wines, you may need to supply them with the name of the importer or distributor.

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