In my ongoing quest to get you all to drink more wine, I’ve been encouraging active, thoughtful tasting. This month we complete the final leg of the proverbial three-legged stool of wine components with acidity, the most important element for matching wine with food. If you missed the others over the last two months, check CL’s handy web archive.

The secret to great wine, as with great food, is in the quest for balance. The fruit (leg 1) should be full-bodied but not overpoweringly jammy; tannin (leg 2) creates structure but must stop short of an astringency level that tastes bitter; and acidity (leg 3) on the palate should be lively and fresh rather than sharp. Winemakers work very hard to balance these elements, and great wines juggle that equilibrium much like the Flying Karamazov Brothers toss around weird objects with aplomb.

Acidity turbocharges flavor in wine the same way a squeeze of lemon makes seafood pop, or tomato sauce gives dimension to pizza or pasta. Chefs often add a touch of vinegar to enhance and lengthen flavors as they’re tweaking food to balance dishes. In wine, the presence of acidity refreshes your palate.

Luckily for those of us working to find great pairings, winemakers are becoming more food-conscious and using all the tools at their disposal in the vineyard and the winery to lower alcohol levels and increase mouthwatering acidity so their wines will go better with food.

So you may ask: short of using litmus paper or a pH dip strip from my pool, how do I determine acidity? Well, generally, the lighter the color of the wine, the greater the perception of acidity. But more importantly, just ask yourself how much your mouth waters after a sip. You sense acid under your tongue, just behind your lower lip. More acidity, more saliva. If you taste a high-acid wine, such as Champagne or Albariño, next to a low-acid style like Gewürztraminer, the difference will be crystal clear.

Acidity cleanses your palate and prepares you for the next bite. That’s why Champagne or sparkling wine is a good choice if you’re having a hard-to-match menu of diverse foods. When I was lucky enough to return with a friend to Alinea, one of the world’s great restaurants in Chicago, I skipped the wine pairings, which I found disappointing (and expensive) on my first visit. Instead, we shared a brut rosè Champagne, which served us well through a quirky, wide-ranging menu of 24 mini “modernist cuisine” courses. Acidity was the key. Our palates were ready for anything the kitchen could throw at us from their amazingly complicated bag of tricks.

Most Old World winemakers understand acidity and get the balance right, especially with Riesling, which is a great food wine — and it’s not all sweet. Although, like Gewürztraminer, those versions that are off-dry (winespeak for having residual sugar) are wonderful matches for spicy food like Indian, Thai or Moroccan cuisines.

Food and wine matching is more art than science. You can “compare” by matching a high-acid wine with an acidic dish featuring vinaigrette or tomato sauce. Or “contrast” and counterbalance the acidity with fatty, oily foods (pâté, smoked salmon) or salty dishes (caviar, oysters). Comparing is a safer strategy, but contrast offers the chance of breathless discovery.

Next month, we’ll take the tools that I trust you’ve mastered by tasting obsessively over the past year and look more closely at strategies for ferreting out mind-blowing pairings. In the interim, taste expansively. Try something new. And, most importantly, use as many senses as possible with your brain in gear. Joy will surely follow. 

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Living in Florida means that Latin cuisine is never too far from our minds or our mouths. For example, how often do you see Cuban sandwiches on deli menus and deli platters throughout Tampa Bay? If you are craving some Latin flavor but cooking a Latin feast is out of the question (lack of time, motivation or skills), how do ready-made soups, seasonings and rice mixes sound?

Nueva Cocina, a Miami-based company, brings Latin flavor into their cocina (kitchen). This company makes soups, seasonings and rice mixes with 100% natural ingredients, no preservatives and no artificial ingredients, making their products 100% delicious. Not only that, but many of Nueva Cocina’s products are gluten-free and vegetarian.

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Flavored cheeses have not always had the best reputation, but they are covering new ground in a powerful way. Adding gourmet ingredients to sound, quality milk can lead to a masterful product. Thoughtfully considering the milk's characteristics and origin is another crucial element to incorporating culinary zing into a cheese’s paste.

The Italian Rosso family has done all of the above with their creation of Juni. This raw cow’s milk cheese has local juniper berries added to the curd. Juniper berries are the key botanical to the flavor profile of gin and grow wild in the Piedmont region. It makes sense to add the mountain’s natural bounty to the milk of the cows that roam the terrain. After a couple of months of aging, the result is a well-balanced, tangy cheese that goes down like a silky gin martini. Enjoy this treat with a bottle of Villa Russiz Sauvignon Blanc Collio 2008 from Friuli, Italy. This wine enhances the creaminess of the already lovely Juni and complements the juniper with a touch of soft peach.

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Sooner Holley:  In addition to the constant ribbing I'm getting lately about how "Tebow is Superman – just admit it" and how I better start mining for kryptonite, there's a more personal Holley-criticism which is coming to me more and more frequently: Apparently, I lack objectivity.  By not admitting that Tim Tebow may as well be Zeus and Apollo combined because he has faced more top 50 defenses than Sammy B. and the Sooner offense, I am failing to recognize some legitimate facts and therefore, am not an objective fan.

Objective….Fan….Objective….Fan….there's something that doesn't feel right about that pairing of words.

Oh, it's that they are completely contradictory.

If you are a "fan", you have a bias.  That is the definition of the word.  You support a particular team, group, cause, ice cream flavor, grocery store, yada yada yada.  Objectivity doesn't really have a place in "fandom" or "fannery" or "fanaticism".  (I think that last one is the correct noun, but honestly, I like "fannery" the best.  It has a nice ring, doesn't it?)

Example:

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From our man in Sarasota, Justin Richards:

Before some friends and I tried flavor tripping for the first time, I’ll admit I had some unrealistic expectations. I thought the newly popularized miracle fruit would make my palate go temporarily insane; olives would taste like licorice, rice would taste like pudding, soap would taste like marmalade. We’d be licking the ambrosial sweat from each other’s armpits!

This past weekend, a friend from Ft. Lauderdale bought berries (at $3 each) from a local horticulturist, and seven of us prepared a smorgasbord. We each chewed a berry, swished it around in our mouths for a minute, then began to taste.

First, we did lemons and limes. Some said they tasted like tangerines, but there was more to the flavor than that: essence-of-lime without the sourness. We sliced them up and squeezed them one after another into our mouths.

“It has buttery notes!” said the person next to me.

Heineken became very drinkable on the miracle fruit. Some of the tasters thought it evoked cream soda. One friend suggested writing a letter to the brewer: “Dear Heineken, we had to pay $3 to enjoy your beer.”

Ranch dressing tasted like custard.

Bordeaux tasted like Riesling.

Goat cheese tasted like cream cheese.

Dubliner cheese tasted like a milder cheese.

Tequila tasted like tequila. (Tequila will not be moved.)

As you can see, the flavor conversions weren’t as wild as I’d thought they’d be.

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