I’m just back from a not entirely great cruise down the St. Lawrence River from Montreal through Québec and around Nova Scotia to end in Boston. We’d hoped for long stretches of forested shores and autumn leaves and even some birds, but it was not to be: It turns out that beyond Québec City the St. Lawrence broadens out so far you might as well be at sea, with nothing but water to look at in every direction. Sigh.
.
Thus scenically deprived, we spent more time than was truly wise eating and drinking, and that too not entirely happily. Our noble vessel – Windstar Cruise’s Star Pride – sported a quite lengthy wine list, but it was far too Californicated for our Europe-oriented palates: much too much New World wine, far too little French, Italian, or Spanish. Sigh again.
The crew did its best to stress the strengths of what the ship offered. Beverage Director Antony Cruz and Sommelier Johnbosco Pereira (pictured below) organized several tastings, starting with an introductory one contrasting New World and Old World styles, which was very appropriate for the majority of the passengers, and going on to tastings of premium wines, single malt whiskies, of which the ship stocked a goodly number, and Cognacs.
.
Nevertheless, every day we had to deal with that dominantly New World list. This is not to say that we found nothing to drink: On the contrary, there were several bottles that we made the most of – particularly a lovely Prosecco for aperitifs and light lunches and a charming Barbera d’Asti from Batasiolo, as well as an Antinori Pèppoli Chianti Classico that served well with lunch.
.
.
But the menus of our ship’s several dining venues were strongly white-wine oriented, with more chicken dishes than I had feared. Inescapably, this led to our heavily relying on the few white Burgundies and Spanish whites available, especially a good sturdy pair of Albariños and Verdejos, a very nice Labouré Roi Pouilly Fuissé, and one fine Chablis from Domaine William Fèvre.
.
.
Some consequently unorthodox food and wine pairings led me to the conscious realization of something I had sort of known but never really formulated for myself: to wit, that white wines are unexpectedly versatile with all sorts of food, including dishes that you would normally match with red wines. Forget about red wine with fish, which really only ever worked well with salmon and pinot noir anyway: Try white wine with red meat.
Not just any white wine with any red meat, of course. You still have to pay attention to the complementarities of the weight and intensity of the two. For the more assertively flavored meats, you definitely want a white wine with some heft and authority of its own, and especially one with a respectable amount of acidity to deal with red-flesh sweetness and to cut through the fats of, for instance, a grilled lamb chop. It’s not ideal, but we did find a few Old World whites on the cruise that could do that very satisfactorily.
Spanish whites are generally sturdy enough to do the job. Among French wines, bigger white Burgundies will serve, but best of all – sturdier and richer in themselves – are Rhône whites. I think several Italian whites from Friuli and Campania would also handle red meats with little trouble, but we weren’t able to test that theory because the ship’s wine list was – for our palates at least – very deficient in Italian whites.
You will probably in most cases want to stick with the old red meat/red wine paradigm – but if you ever find yourself in a situation where the best wine on the list is clearly a white and you don’t want to eat fish or, heaven forfend, chicken, don’t be afraid to give a big, well balanced white a try with steak or chops. You might be surprised by how pleasing it can be.
Tom's Wine Line 