Champagne and Cinnamon Toast Crunch is not my cup of tea

"I HOPE the wine doesn't make a mockery of the meal" is what a friend of mine always says before pouring the wine for dinner. Since he's a good cook, his concern is as charming as it is misplaced. But his comment raises the question of how to choose an 'unassuming wine' that won't make a mockery of the meal - that will, in fact, complement it.

Wine writers do much hand wringing over this issue. Attempts to educate palates have thrown up kaleidoscopic aroma wheels, like psychedelic Periodic Tables, and overly complex pairing charts riddled with skulls and crossbones and the warning: 'Here be dragons'.

Yet, for all their efforts, identifying aromas remains difficult for many wine-lovers: like picking out a suspect, while blindfold, from a line-up wearing masks. You can't see what you're looking for (the mystery fruit) and what you're looking for is disguised (as wine).

And what's the point of elaborate lists with precise advise on what complements nettle bavarois with smoked eel when most people don't eat that sort of thing everyday, anyway?

No wonder a supermarket survey recently reported 74% of shoppers buy wine for its price, 44% choose it for its label, but only 3% describe the pairing issue as “essential”.

Wine blogger Gary Vaynerchuck caused a hoo-ha recently when he paired wine with breakfast cereal on his Wine Library TV internet show. He describes the Cap't Crunch 'n Spätlese Riesling a pinnacle pairing; the Chardonnay 'n Cinnamon Toast Crunch is almost as good; though he's disappointed with demi-sec Champagne 'n Lucky Charms.

It's impressive and intimidating to hear Vaynerchuck gush about the 23 aromas he's getting but, unless you're a wine-loving infant who can't get through breakfast without a glass of something, his advice is of little utility. And what should one make of gastronomic tips from a man whose favourite food is chemically-processed cereal?

Does he really believe wine goes with anything? Chewing gum? Toothpaste? And the traditional enemies of wine: eggs, artichokes, smoked salmon, vinaigrette, fresh fruit salads, chocolate, ice-cream and emulsified sauces?

Watching wacky Vaynerchuck chomp on spoonfuls of Cap't Crunch, it occurs to me: this isn't really a food pairing, this is a wrestling match. The cereal's papaya notes pummelling the wine's guava hints on the mid-palate. What he needs is a cleansing cup of tea to wash the sickly, blue lucky-horseshoe and soggy Champagne cookie-dough carnage off his palate.

But a cup of what? White, green, red or black? I asked Japanese tea lady Madame Kiyoko for advice at her boutique 'Cipango' (Marco Polo's word for Japan) in Perpignan.

“Maddeningly,” she says, wringing her hands, “wine critics influence how tea people talk about pairing. Lists match tea with food too precisely. And questionable inherited wisdom prevails. Why would you match smoky Lapsang Souchong with smoked salmon?” (The tea equivalent of the curiously popular pairing of unctuous Sauternes with fatty foie gras).

And yet, on one list, Darjeeling goes with almost anything – it's the Merlot of teas. How can that be?

“Few pairings are, in fact, wrong,” Kiyoko says. “If in doubt, apply the principle of inverse effort. If the food has complex, intense flavours, choose a tea with a simpler profile. And vice-versa.” Very yin-yang.

And if the tea turns out to be a 'cheeky little cuppa' that makes a mockery of the meal?

“You can regulate the intensity and complexity of tea with infusion time,” she advises. That's why Darjeeling goes shamelessly with almost any dish. Make it strong and it's perfect with fish 'n chips, the tannins in the tea cavorting with the vinegar's acidity without strangling the tongue.

Similarly, you can modify a wine's 'amusing presumption' by changing its temperature. Chill a wine to tame bold flavours, or subdue tannins. To accentuate a wine's acidity, again, chill it. Even a Merlot can be tricked into complementing spicy Indian food by chilling.

Kiyoko became beetle-browed when I asked her to try Cap't Crunch 'n Spätlese. Not her cup of tea. She recommends English Breakfast – or a tea from the same region as the cereal. But where on earth is Cap't Crunch from?

First published in The Connexion (February 2011).

Wine gadgets 'licenced to overkill'

JANUARY is a time for resolutions, regimes, out-with-the-old, in-with-the-new, and offloading unwanted Christmas gifts on eBay. Among them should be certain wine accessories.

Oddly, wine paraphernalia manufacturers assume the bright lights of Christmas turn ordinary people into gadget fetishists, offering us flappy-paddle corkscrews, electric suction pumps, cap foil cutters, argon gas preserving canisters, and (my favourite) a wine stopper with a four-figure combination lock.

But looking at these contraptions, I wonder: whoever put James Bond's master of invention, 'Q', in charge of wine gadgets? What happened to the simple “waiter's friend”?

In Dr No, Bond didn’t even have a gadget. Then, in From Russia With Love, he had 'Q' and a briefcase with a hidden dagger, gold sovereigns, and exploding canisters. Before you could say “Goldfinger”, the briefcase had evolved into an Aston-Martin.

The same has happened to wine accessories. So which of them are pure Honey Ryder (the best ever Bond girl, played by Ursula Andress in Dr No) and which are just Plenty O'Toole (played by Lana Turner in the lame Diamonds are Forever)? Put another way, which should you keep, and which should you offload?

Flappy-paddle corkscrews are very Bond. They come in carrying cases that complement an Aston-Martin's glove-box. But they take three hands to operate and the self-congratulation that comes with using one is diminished by the silly feeling you've just used a folding helicopter to cross the street. Worryingly, mine came with spare parts, presumably for when it's betrayed by its poor manufacture. What am I bid, Plenty?

Ditto argon gas wine preservers and suction pumps. The rigmarole of preserving wine by either method is scarcely rewarded by the result. Apart from the fact that some wines actually gain in complexity from exposure to air, just how often do you NOT finish a bottle of wine within three or four days? Put a cork in it, Plenty. And pop it in the fridge.

Because serving wine at the recommended temperature is important, wine thermometers are handy. The bracelet type slips easily around a bottle and tells you if a wine needs to chill, or is already chambré. Some helpfully include the wine type associated with the temperature. I just slipped one onto my wrist, I'm a red Burgundy... very Honey Ryder. Keep them, but grow out of them. They are accessories, after all.

I do like gadgets that aerate wine as you pour. They pop sleekly into a bottle's neck and render redundant incommodious decanters. Both soften wine, but not by mellowing tannins, as we are inclined to believe. To achieve that quickly would take high pressure, pure oxygen, extreme temperatures and contact with a catalytic surface (like iron filings), Mr Bond.

What these gadgets actually do is to allow the sometimes potent odour of sulphur in wine to dissipate. That's why aerated wines smell and taste better that wines drunk from a freshly opened bottle. Alternatively, to eliminate sulphur notes, you can drop a coin into your glass, or stir the wine with a steel knife (if you happen to have those items in your briefcase).

Curiously, there are no gadgets for removing the unpleasant, dank flavour of a “corked” wine, which renders a wine unsuitable for both drinking and cooking. In the absence of 'Q', here's a tip from Andrew Waterhouse, professor of wine chemistry at top US wine school and my alma mater, the University of California, Davis: pour the wine into a bowl lined with cling film.

This messy but effective home-made solution works because the trichloroanisole (TCA) responsible for infecting corks is chemically similar to polyethylene and sticks to the plastic film in just a few minutes. Alternatively, if you're not worried about compromising your “shaken, not stirred” image, you can combine aerating your wine with treating it for TCA by blowing bubbles into your glass through a plastic straw.

If he had had an arsenal of wine accessories, Auric Goldfinger would have chosen more wisely than strapping 007 to a table and threatening him with a laser. He could have sucked the life out him with my electric wine pump, or threatened him with a bottle sealed with a combination lock stopper and the words, “No, Mr Bond, I expect you to die... of thirst.”

First published in The Connexion (January 2011).

Photograph of Plenty O'Toole by Nye Bradley.