FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Finding wines that flatter dishes is fun

By Wanda A. Adams

In most wine-tastings, the focus is on the wine. If food is served, it's designed to complement the wine, or at least stay out of its way.

But every six to eight weeks at Chef Mavro restaurant — whenever chef/owner George Mavrothalassitis changes the small, select menu — they hold another kind of wine-tasting: one designed to discover wines that flatter food.

The tastings are vital because this restaurant's unusual approach is to offer only a few wines pre-selected to match the dishes of the seasonally changing menu.

"We are not looking for the best wine; we are looking for the best pairing," Mavrothalassitis said. "Very often the best wine is not the best pairing."

Or the other way around: It's not unusual for first-time guests at Chef Mavro to express skepticism at the selections — perhaps the matched wine is a varietal they do not like, or they may taste the wine before the dish is served and find it unremarkable. Some are surprised to learn how different the wine can taste when properly matched to predominant flavors in a dish.

"Mavro," as he's universally known, presides over the tastings. Single bottles of each of the wines are pre-selected by wine consultant Brian Geiser, based on the recipes Mavro has shown him, the wine's price and availability. (If the perfect match can't be had in sufficient quantities, there's no point in tasting it. Because so few wines are served — little more than a dozen — the restaurant goes through a fair number of bottles of each.)

The tasters are Mavro's staff and the process is all business, though in a decadent sort of way. The dishes come out, Mavro says a few words about the food, Geiser says a few words about the wine and then everyone digs in, family-style, and scribbles notes, ranking the wines from best match to worst.

In the three years that this small, friendly group has been together, they've developed quite a unified palate, so there is generally little argument about which wine works best with the new dishes Mavro presents.

It occurred to me as we slurped and munched and shared views that this would make a great format for a dinner party. Choose a couple of recipes you'd like to find a match for — say a fish dish and a meat dish, or an appetizer and an entree. Get your wine seller to suggest two or three wines for each (you'll buy only a single bottle of each). Then have four or six friends in for a tasting, allowing everyone to hold forth on which wines they liked.