Food pairing with wine

I try to avoid the prevailing wisdom that there is some "perfect" or "required" wine to go with a specific food. There's an incredible range of tastes in any varietal and specific recommendations often get bogged down in questions of regional availability.

There's a dead heat in my wine-loving heart between Shiraz and good Zinfandel. But, Zins have a lot more range of quality, tastes, tones and notes than Shiraz. What might work like a champ with Cline Old Vine would be just tolerable with Seghesio, and would be overpowered by Ridge Geyserville. And, I've been a bit of a believer that a lot of Turley's simply are too much for a meal.

That being said, I like red Zins with almost any red meat. Cabs go better with steaks, but zins do the job with all sorts of meals ranging from burgers to stews to Steak Diane. There's not much that won't get along with zins. IMHO YMMV.

There's a range of sangiovese that spans really good things in my taster to some really rank "rubber-boot" notes that I simply abhor. New world Sangiovese is often better for me than clbuttic Italian wines. (Please note that this is more likely due to poor travel and limited availability in the "heartland" where I'm likely to find a bottle of Italian.)

As a primarily Italian varietal, it always works with Italian foods. Better with clbuttic red sauced pastas, but not at all bad with things like osso buco. I even drink it with white sauced Italian dishes and it works great to cut the richness of things like carbonara. IMHO.

All of that preaching above and here I must admit to being a Muscat virgin. Maybe next year.

Ed Rasimus Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret) "When Thunder Rolled" www.thunderchief.org www.thundertales.blogspot.com