With this post, I am starting a new sub-category. In the past, all of my Food & Wine pairings have been with “home prepared” dishes. Today, I’m adding the restaurant option. From now on, I will occasionally do a pairing that one might be able to make at a restaurant with a GOOD wine menu. In most cases, this would not be your local burger/ pizza joint, but the kind of restaurant a true “foodie” would recommend. I thought I would start with my favorite “light & fluffy” dessert, the old classic, creme brulee.
Most “high end” restaurants have Creme Brulee on their dessert menu. It’s the classic French vanilla custard with a caramelized sugar crust, frequently topped with fruit. If they use real vanilla, instead of artificial vanilla, there will be black dots (fresh vanilla beans) in the custard. Otherwise, all basic creme brulees are essentially the same and Canadian Icewine is what pairs the best with it. If they have any on their dessert menu, it’s probably Inniskillin and if you’re lucky, they have both Vidal & Cabernet Franc. Cab Franc would pair the best, but if they only have the Vidal, that will do. In my local area, Ocean Blue (in Utica) is the only restaurant, I’m aware of, that has both creme brulee & Cab Franc Icewine. If they don’t have Icewine, then look for a late harvest Riesling, a French Sauternes, an Italian Valpolicella, or a Portuguese Madeira.
Why Icewine with creme brulee? In my opinion, nothing goes better with most desserts than Canadian Icewine. The very “sugary” nature of a majority of desserts requires a wine with a higher than normal sugar content. So, that leaves late harvest Rieslings or a short list of sweet wines (Icewine, Sauternes, Valpolicella, or Madeira). In this case, vanilla custard goes really well with Vidal Icewine. Add in the berries and I would opt for a Cab Franc Icewine. There are several very good Canadian Icewine producers (Inniskillin, Pellar, Jackson Triggs, Konzelmann, Thirty Bench, etc.), but the most exported is Inniskillin and their Cab Franc is one of the best! If they don’t have Icewine, then my back up would be a Sauternes. Matching dessert wine with the country of the dessert works as it does with the other courses (French wine with French food, Italian wine with Italian food, etc.), as a general rule. Otherwise, pairing dessert with a true dessert wine is a good place to start.
That should be enough for this blog. Next time, I will go back to Education and finish the major wine producing countries of the world. Check it out to see who’s left. Cheers!