Frank Swainston (below), in his kitchen at  Constantia Uitsig, Cape Town , South Africa.

Our latest podcast People in Wine Special: food and wine matching, is available for download on whichever podcatcher you favour. You can also listen online at our main website - www.finewinepress.com. It is a special year-end edition and hence longer than usual.

So, what’s in it?

Well, this is the festive season and I’ve asked wine experts, chefs, consultants and restauranteurs around the world about their ideas for food and wine matching. Their suggestions are highly relevant but the ultimate is creating a dish which is paired to the wine. This is the real acme of gastronomy but whilst we should be grateful for the existence of Alain Senderens and Philippe Marques the reverse role is no less important because, for the most part, we’re stuck with the dish and just need to do our best in pairing it with a wine we like, we happen to want at that moment, which is on the list, is one we can afford and which compliments the dish. We should be grateful that an expert sommelier like Hervè Pennequin can take the pain out of our decision. Confronted with a wine list of five hundred wines or more, choosing the right one is a daunting task and it’s enough to put one off the meal in the first place. Of course, that dish, whatever it is, can still be delicious and we should be thankful for that. However, next time you emerge from a restaurant take a look at your bill. Just how much was the wine you bought compared to the food? Remember too, that the wine is a fixed commodity albeit slowly evolving and any chef could make some small but all important adjustments to their recipes every day without too much inconvenience but possibly dramatic consequences for the food to wine equation.

What I most liked about talking to everyone on the programme is their common passion for wine. But, even if the food is great, many of us go and enjoy a meal with the expectation of enjoying a terrific bottle of wine to accompany it, so it is hard to understand why it has taken so long for chefs to get with it and and start matching the food to the wine rather than vice versa. But whether we’re producing a podcast, a website, a supper for a family of four, or meals for hundred guests, the reality is that we need to address our main audience who may not care. Take Frank Swainston: he decided to create a wonderful Italian Christmas dinner and everyone wanted to eat turkey. Rafaelle Alajmo has a high class international clientele and they’re completely focussed on Italian wines. Claudia Stern’s mainly German clientele is young and enquiring, lucky for her. Tony Gear’s Russian customers at the Old Custom’s House in St Petersburg want what they never had before and which, with all his experience of the world, he is well able to provide. So each operates in their own market.

Anyway, there should be something for everyone here. Advice from a dentist on how to look after your teeth, how to match chocolate to a wine, what kind of bounty those in the Southern Hemisphere are enjoying at this time, what the trends are in wine consumption, food ideas, and wine ideas. Then there are a few laughs and even some music. An hour should seem short… shorter than watching the podcast download to your computer.

You can listen to the programme on iTunes, podomatic.com, ipodderX etc and if none of these work tune in to our site where you can stream the programme.

Someone contacted me the other day saying they couldn’t listen… Our staff worked hard to locate the problem. Half an hour later we realised they didn’t have speakers… please, get yourself a pair. You can’t hear audio without speakers. Lesson number one.

Fabian Cobb

People in Wine: Special - wine and food matching with: Dr Ron Georgiou, MW, Australia
Hervè Pennequin, Nikolai’s Roof, Atlanta
Frank Swainston, Constantia Uitsig, Cape Town
Tony Gear, The Old Custom’s House, St Petersburg
Rafaelle Alajmo, Calandre, Padova
Philippe Marques, Senderens, Paris
Claudia Stern, Vintage, Cologne
Alexandre de Lur Saluces and Roland Daugareil
Cosmos

One Response to “People in Wine: Lesson Number One”

1. Melgab International CC
   December 3rd, 2005 @ 9:44 am

   Uitsig’s Swainston Featured in ‘People in Wine’ Podcast

   Constantia Uitsig’s Frank Swainston was amongst the people featured in finewinepress.com’s recent podcast. The podcast itself is described thus: Food and wine matching around the world, or vice versa. We visit Germany, France, Italy, US, Australia, …

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