When it comes to wine and beer, I’ve noticed that people tend to fall firmly into one camp or the other—and never the two shall meet (or agree!). But even though I lean toward the wine-worshipping camp, I still really like a good beer every now and again.
The thing is, while I can tell you all about the nuances of pairing wine with food, I don’t know much about the nuances of how to choose the proper beer to complement a dish. Do the same principles apply? As it turns out, this whole week I’ve been stomping around vineyards in Spain with the one person who could answer these questions: Marnie Old.
Marnie bowled me over with her incredible depth of knowledge on the topic of wine when we first met several years ago. She even makes the boring, scientific stuff sound like the most exciting, interesting story you’ve ever heard. She’s an amazing, fun teacher. Marnie wrote a book, He Said Beer, She Said Wine: Impassioned Food Pairings to Debate and Enjoy—From Burgers to Brie and Beyond (recently released in paperback) with Sam Calagione, the owner of the Delaware-based brewery Dogfish Head (which, actually, happens to make my favorite beer). So, I wasted no time grilling Marnie on my beer-wine conundrum.
Amy Zavatto: There are a lot of preconceived notions about wine and beer, aren’t there?
Marnie Old: People tend to think that beer is going to be the low-rent beverage and that wine automatically is more of an elite product. The reality is that beer and wine have a lot more in common than most people realize. They’re both fermented beverages, and they both get their complexity from the action of yeast. It’s true that many beers, and certainly the ones we encounter most often and see in the commercial supermarket, are made relatively inexpensively. But you can make low-cost wine as well. In our popular consciousness, the word “wine” calls to mind the Bordeaux and the Burgundies and the great Napa Cabernets. But there is actually a lot more jug wine produced in the world than there is fine wine! And there's a huge array of [beer] styles out there that range from the modest to the, dare I say, elite, to the high quality craftsmanship that we might associate more strongly with wine. There's also a perception that beer is something to drink when you feel like drinking, whereas wine is something to drink when you’re eating. {On the contrary,} some mass produced jug wine and mass-produced macro-lagers are very much designed to be consumed as a cocktail—and the finest wines and beers are both designed more as food partners than as just quaffing beverages.
AZ: On that note, what kind of similarities do wine and beer have when it comes to pairing them with food?
MO: There are some pretty strong similarities! In fact most of the same rules of thumb that you might use in pairing wine to food apply to beer as well. For example, body is a very important question. With wine, we naturally tend to pick the one with the lightest body—those with lower alcohol and that feel sheer and refreshing in the mouth—to pair with the foods that are lightest in body as well, meaning lower in fat. Fuller bodied wines, those that have more alcohol content, more richness of texture, we tend to pair with richer foods. The same pattern pans out in beer. Lower alcohol, lighter bodied beers tend to pair best with the lighter foods and richer beers really do cry out for more texture in the food as well.
AZ: What about spicy foods? People tend to turn toward beer when they eat hot, spicy dishes, even though wine can be a great match, too. Why is that?
MO: Oh, for very good reason! You generally don’t walk into an authentic Mexican or Pakistani restaurant and look around and see everyone drinking martinis and shots of tequila. There’s too much alcohol—it hurts like hell! Within the world of alcoholic beverages, beer is generally the lowest alcohol product available in a restaurant. So, it’s not really a surprise that within the very hottest cuisines we see people drinking the lowest alcohol beverage possible, which is usually a commercial lager. When, for example, hot, spicy chili peppers hit your tongue or your lips, they cause a burning sensation that is perceived as essentially painful. Now, of course, it’s a pain we like, but we just want to flirt with the edges of it usually; we don’t want to make it more painful. Alcohol acts as an irritant. Whether you’re pairing with beer or wine, you’ll see that winemakers, vintners, sommeliers, as well as brewers and beer experts will tend to steer you toward the lower alcohol, lighter-bodied beers when pairing with the very spiciest foods because higher alcohol will create kind of an uncomfortable sensation of mild pain.
AZ: Which beers and wines are the most versatile?
MO: In my experience, moderation and skewing toward the lighter side of the flavor, body, and alcohol spectrum adds flexibility with foods. So, if you’re in a restaurant and all your friends are having different entrees or if you’re trying to pick a wine to enjoy before what you’re actually ordering for dinner in a restaurant, my advice is to stick to the medium-bodied styles, whether it's white wine, red wine, pale lager, or dark ale; stick to the medium bodied and maybe even verging on the lighter styles if you want the most versatility. It’s sort of like the Goldie Locks rule—you know, not too hot, not too cold, somewhere close to the middle.
AZ: Name some names for us.
MO: In terms of mid-weight beers that I think are extraordinarily flexible, a great place to go is the pale ale style. It has moderate enough alcohol that can go with lighter food like salads, but enough richness that it can stand up to fish, shellfish, and even meats. Flavor-wise, they’ve got enough hops to stand up to bolder preparations and seasonings as well. On the wine side, I tend to think something in the mid-weight reds that aren’t overly purple in color or overly alcoholic. Chiantis, for example, are going to have a much wider range of possible flattering pairings than something as heavy and intense as a big Syrah or a big Cabernet. On the white wine side, I tend to think texturally rich whites without being overly oaked, so perhaps a cool-climate Chardonnay, like a white Burgundy, for example, or Sauvignon Blanc from New Zealand or Chile.
