Flash in the Pan

I received an email from a wine writer and sommelier, Natalie MacLean, about her web site. (She did begin this email with, "I enjoy following your stories," a nice bit of flattery, though I suspect goes out to any journalist receiving the email.)

I know of her but don't know her personally, so I went over to her site to see what was going on. Among the other aspects of her site is a wine and food matcher (listed as Food & Wine in the site's menu). You pick either the wine or food, and you get matches. It's a multi-step process, and you're not restricted to the obvious. For example, I first choose snacks, and then picked Oreos. Wine with Oreos? Who's have thought it? Though I remember doing theater in college and the technical crews would often have the cookies with orange juice, so a combination of acid and sweet did work. Ms. MacLean's recommendations? Either Banyuls (a fortified aperitif or dessert wine from the Pyrenees - thanks Wikipedia) or a vintage port. You can then enter the wine into a search engine and get her recent reviews. I did so for Banyuls and found her "Good Value Wines February 2007."

Next, I started over with sparkling wine, picked asti spumante, and got the following recommendations:

• Chocolate Mousse (Light)



• Christmas Pudding



• Fruit Salad



• Lemon Souffle



• Mille Feuilles



• Pavlova

For turkey pot pie? Chianti or Sauvignon Blanc. This isn't going to cover every conceivable food you could think of, but it has a lot of useful pairings for every day eating, and any time you can get a wine pairing for a favorite cookie, it's at least worth a smile. Want to know what goes with Fig Newtons? She says she'll respond to emails from the site.

Labels: food, Natalie MacLean, pairings, web site, wine