Wine Pairing: Seared Tuna with a 2006 Stefani Wine Syrah

Wine rules: White wine with Chicken and Fish. Red wine with meats. Blah blah blah…

Forget the rules. If you like red wine with fish, drink red wine with fish. If you like a light, crisp, acidic white wine with your 44 oz porterhouse steak cooked rare, MORE POWER TO YOU! Sure there are some classic pairings that make the whole food and wine experience an epiphany (Sauternes and Fois Gras comes to mind) but in general, if it tastes good to you drink it. If it doesn’t, then DON’T drink it.

We recently enjoyed a black pepper/sesame seed-seared Yellow fin tuna steak that Kim made for us paired with a 2006 Stefania Wine Syrah (which was a great wine). “But Mike, there’s asparagus on that plate…and no wine goes with asparagus!” I’ll admit, it’s a tough pairing, but I love asparagus so I’m going to eat it. I just simply eat the asparagus between bites of the other good stuff.

And yes, there is also guacamole on the plate with wheat/flax seed chips…and you know what, I thoroughly enjoyed those too!!!

No breaking news here - just another reminder to eat what you like and drink what you like, regardless of the critics and experts!
Late addition: A great article appeared recently in “The Pour” (New York Times wine blog) about pairing Oyster’s with Red Wine: A Rule Just Waiting to Be Broken.

The following quote sums it up more elegantly and with many more words than I used, but it’s the same message:

“Personally, I don’t like to devote too much energy to pondering which wine to serve with which food. I prefer to trust instinct and desire over an analysis of flavor and body matches.

Often precision is the enemy of pleasure as it reduces the enjoyable task of choosing a wine to a system in which you must dissect a dish into its sweet, sour, salty and bitter components and pair it with a wine that has been dismantled into elements of acidity, pH, phenols and diacetylenes. You don’t know whether to grab a fork or a piece of litmus paper.

Here, instinct is just another word for experience, and I’m afraid that’s the bottom line for pairing wines and foods. Years of trying many dishes with different wines yields preferences that can stand in for any system. “