Often successful wine and food pairing is just a matter of common sense. You wouldn’t use a hammer to insert a SIM card, would you? Or a nuclear weapon to zap a mosquito? Or a crowbar to create a seat for yourself on a crowded subway train? (Okay, not a valid analogy, but worth considering for its potential utility.) Anyway, the point here is that you do not want to overpower one with the other. If you have any doubts about this, try consuming fugu sashi (thinly sliced raw blowfish [so thin that the slices are nearly translucent]) with a gutsy, jammy, alcohol-laden, old-vines Shiraz from Barossa Valley. (Whew, my mouth started to water as I was writing that one.) So, raw oysters and fugu sashi should pair well with, say, Sauvignon Blanc. Pretty simple, right?
Well, that’s not necessarily so. Considering the food to be consumed is important, of course, but it is also necessary to consider how the edible is prepared (pan fried, deep fried, boiled…?) and served (smothered in sauce?). That Sauvignon Blanc may go well with raw oysters, but it won’t be so great with Oysters Rockefeller.
In the next entry we will provide sensory evaluations of ostrich prepared under two conditions and paired with three wines, all reasonably priced.
Drinking Japan 