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Salud!: Wine at a tailgate won't incur penalties

Lindsay Christians  —  10/20/2008 10:18 pm

Wine goes with cheese, beer goes with bratwurst. The second is practically an inviolate pairing in Wisconsin, but does it have to be?

Some of the food at a tailgate will take just as easily to wine as to beer -- maybe even better. Potato salad pairs well with pinot grigio. Brats love a juicy merlot or earthy tempranillo. You can even pair watermelon with vinho verde, if you're so inclined (a great value white at $10 or less).

Before the recent Wisconsin football game against Ohio State, we set out to prove the rules wrong with several bottles we'd never tried. Pairing wine and tailgating fare isn't terribly tricky, but it does help to have a few basic parameters.

Don't spend too much on a wine for a tailgate. People aren't paying all that much attention to it -- if it's smooth, well-balanced and a little spicy, you're in business. All of our options were quaffers, not sippers, and none topped the $12 mark.

As the weather gets colder, I lean strongly toward red wines. Zinfandel, with its high alcohol content and big berry flavors, is a California favorite that pairs well with almost anything off the grill and warms the body up quickly. Many Meritage (pronounced like "heritage") blends -- made from Bordeaux varietals like cabernet sauvignon, merlot, petit verdot and malbec -- are good options, priced right and easy to find.

If you have a large group, keep the options limited. You don't want to spend half the pregame time waffling between wine choices. Find two that you like and buy a few bottles of each.

Finally, some foods don't take terribly well to wine, and it's no good trying to push it. Sauerkraut, for example, can contain red wine vinegar, an ingredient that makes most all wine taste awful. Chips and salsa usually beg for something more thirst-quenching, and if you set out a bowl of candies, like Brach's candy corn, just skip the wine completely.

At our shindig, the first guinea pig was a merlot made by Charles Smith, a well-known Washington state winemaker from Walla Walla whose main label is K Vintners. His 2006 "Holy Cow" Merlot ($11.99) comes from Washington grapes in the Columbia Valley and is produced under the Charles Smith Wines label.

Tasters found the merlot "fruity, well-balanced" and slightly sweet, with a long finish (one taster called it a "smooth aftertaste"). This, along with three other wines we tasted, clocked in at 13.5 percent alcohol -- typical for new world reds.

The 2005 Joe Blow Red Wine ($9.99) was the steal of the evening, a favorite among tailgaters made from five varietals. Supposedly an "accident" when someone blended syrah with merlot (I have seen that ruse way too many times on the backs of wine bottles to believe it's anything other than a marketing technique), Joe Blow blends syrah, merlot, petite sirah, zinfandel and cabernet sauvignon to make a wine that is dry and complex with dark fruit and few tannins. The verdict? Very tasty, a definite touchdown.

The Cline Syrah ($8.99) did not fare as well among tasters. Syrah, a Rhone varietal, is known for its spice and pepper, but this 2007 Sonoma County wine lacked the best qualities of the grape. It was sharp and too acidic; tasters wanted something with more kick.

I predicted the 2005 "Earth, Zin & Fire" Zinfandel from Lodi ($11.99) would be the best with the bratwurst, and it was indeed tasty, easy to drink with sausages as well as the chocolate-and-peanut butter buckeyes one Ohio State fan brought to our tailgate.

"It's not too sweet, not too acidic, not too dry -- it's just really good," said one taster. At a whopping 14.8 percent alcohol, this wine heated up fast, with spice, cherry and blackberry flavors.

Finally, we tasted a cabernet sauvignon from Avalon Winery, a 2005 vintage that retails for around $8 to $10. This producer makes only cabernet, sourcing grapes from all over California (for this wine) as well as a Napa Valley-only release. Some tasters found the Avalon brambly and "dirty," not over-oaked like many of its West Coast cousins, with restrained fruit flavors.

I found all of the wines in Madison at the Woodman's East market, though most wine shops in Madison cater to the $10-and-under shopper quite well. Consider going to a wine shop if you want more direction in your selections, but a tailgate may just be the perfect time to pick out a wine with a fun label and give it a try.

 

Lindsay Christians  —  10/20/2008 10:18 pm