$30 Dinner Party with wine pairings!
I’ve been writing monthly articles with recipes for a “$30 Dinner Party” over at LifeStylerMag.com, and this month’s dinner party article includes wine pairings… BUT for the sake of parralellism and length, I included a different wine pairing for every dish. Really though I would have paired the same wine for the appetizer, main course, and dessert: Nutty, crunchy, unctuous Arneis grapes from northern Italy.
“But there’s RED MEAT ON THE MENU!” you say? I say in the reply that the reason for the “red with meat and white with fish” rule only works if you’re assuming that the red you’re buying actually tastes like red wine, i.e., has some acidity and tannin (i.e., sharpness, grittiness, or - in the GQ/Vogue vernacular - balls). Of course, most of the red wine consumed in the US has no acidity or tannin.. and most assuredly has far fewer of these qualities than almost any northern Italian Arneis. This makes Arneis a gutsy, old world white wine like Arneis more of a natural choice for red meat than the watery, plum-scented Malbec that most people would automatically go for when presented with a beef dish.