Acid With Acid

[Innkeeper]

This subject has been kicked around here from time to time. Back in college (so long ago that it was tough and students had no rights) we used to enjoy going to the local spaghetti joint and enjoying Chianti in one of those grass skirted bottles with the ghetti. It stuck in my then young mind that the wine really went well with the food. Much better than the wines I had had at home during those special dinners I was allowed to sip wine at.

Flash forward almost forty years ahead, and I first signed on to this board in November '99. At that time Randy C. gave long and technical advice on a wide range of wine related subjects, including the idea that you should match wines with characteristics similar to the foods one is eating. Light with light, sweet with sweet, and acid with acid. Then Randy went away for awhile.

So, I took up and banner, and practiced what I preached enjoying pinots, barberas, and sangioveses with acidic food. After a year or so the likes of Foodie, Barnesy (both normally nice guys) and others started to pommel me about the neck and thighs with this crazy acid with acid idea. The argument went that this would just make the whole meal more acidic which was not good.

So, I started drinking things like Salice Salentino and other low acid wines with my acidic, mostly Italian, dishes. I found that the wines were nice, but really matched better with non or low acidic dishes. For a long time, I stopped my advice about acid with acid, buy quietly kept eating that way myself. Then Randy came back for awhile and I brought the subject back up again. Foodie practically had apoplexy.

Then just this week our friend Dan Berger had a column in his newsletter on structure. He makes the case that wines without structure as best drunk without food, and that those with structure should be drunk with food, and not without. Then he wrote the following: "Some time in the late 1970s I realized that Chianti tasted alone was nondescript and tart, but was transformed into an enchanting dinner companion once the pasta was served. The reason: the acid in the wine balanced with the acid in the dish."

Why is it that people who know lots and lots about wine are poles apart on this subject?