Perfect Pairings

Photo By John Anderson

Dozens of magazines around the world report on wine, but the periodical with the largest circulation and most consumer influence is The Wine Spectator. In their September 30 issue, they bestowed their Award of Excellence on two Austin Restaurants: Brio Vista and Mirabelle. The award is bestowed to restaurants with interesting wine lists that are not necessarily huge, but artfully assembled. The magazine is especially interested in the restaurant's philosophy as reflected in a written statement from the management. These restaurants deserve congratulations for their achievement. We wondered, though, how well they fare on the elusive marriage between their menus and their wine lists. The Chronicle food staff is always excited to find restaurants that put time, effort, and creativity into the search for great combinations of food and wine. Most of the world looks at wine as an accompaniment to food. In the United States, it receives more attention as a beverage, perhaps to consume with food, but, more often, as an apéritif. To put wine in the same category as other alcoholic refreshment belittles its value. Wines have considerable individual character. The artful blending of the right wine with the appropriate food can boost a mundane dish paired with an average wine to an impressive dining experience. Poorly combined, a superb menu item mated to an exceptional wine will be an expensive letdown. Restaurateurs should be some of our best guides in cutting through the nearly endless permutations of food and wine combinations. Herein lies the rub. Few establishments design menu items based on their wine list or vice-versa.

Brio Vista and Mirabelle are both examples of local restaurants that do it properly. Michael Villim owns Mirabelle. Stewart Scruggs is the executive chef and general manager of Brio Vista. Both men are passionate about getting the pairing absolutely right. They are enthusiastic matchmakers, mating foods with wines to provide a complex union where the sum is greater than the parts.

Mirabelle has become quite well-known in the year it has been open. The restaurant has established its reputation with inventive food plus an imaginative and very fairly priced wine list. In 12 months, Mirabelle has hosted more than 15 wine dinners with prestige vineyards such as St. Francis, Seghesio, Badia a Coltibuono, and, most recently, with Trimbach. Chef Jesus Torres and Villim assemble these dinners to show off the wines with interesting and unpredictable foods, and they have invented some very creative food/wine combinations. The five-course wine dinners run about $60 including wine, tax, and tip and occur at least monthly.

Mirabelle recently hosted a wine dinner for the Trimbach winery. Jean Trimbach is the general manager of the Alsatian winery, founded in 1626, that bears his family name. The original Trimbach bought the land partly because it was cheap (this was during the Sixty Years War), but more for the superb grape-growing location in Ribeauville. Three hundred and seventy three years and 12 generations later, the winery is considered one of France's great treasures. Trimbach's wines, as most Alsatian wines, are assertive, fruity, and bone-dry. They concentrate on varietals that are forceful in their aromas, like Riesling, Gewürztraminer, and Pinot Gris. In the mouth, these wines are concentrated, rich, and excellent with food.

Mirabelle's mates for these wines were generally excellent. Top of the night was a grilled pork loin chop with green apple and apricot chutney, scalloped custard potatoes, and applejack pork jus. This combination would normally be very difficult to match with any wine, let alone a white. Nevertheless, Trimbach poured a 1993 Gewürztraminer Cuvee des Sieigneurs de Ribeaupierre (usually about $30 in the stores). The union of wine and food was perfect. While acids in the food accentuated the fruit in the wine, the roses in the nose of the wine perfectly highlighted the apricot and apple in the sauce. This type of experience is what we look for in a restaurant -- unconventional and surprising occurrences where two items mate to become something much greater than the individual ingredients.

The other great dish of the night was roasted quail with foie gras mousseline, grapes, and eau-de-vie. Again, a tough dish for wine. For this course, the wine chosen was 1996 Pinot Gris Reserve Personnele (about $32 in stores). Trimbach declared this to be the best Pinot Gris they had ever made. This wine had excellent extraction with a complex fruit and mineral nose that was particularly rich. The mineral component allowed the wine to ally with the grapes and eau-de-vie. Again, this was a synergistic integration and a good example of what Mirabelle does right. The only downside of the meal was an Alsatian Muenster cheese course that was just too strong.

When Stewart Scruggs took over at Brio Vista, it had a lackluster reputation. Scruggs, who had been at Zoot for five years, was intent on concocting a great dining experience north of 45th Street. "It is amazing," he says, "when Austin is such a great wine town, that there isn't more emphasis on wine and food pairings at other restaurants." So what is his definition of a great pairing of wine and food? "When their eyes roll back in their head, when the lights go on and you can see they they've had an epiphany." To achieve this ambitious aspiration, he assembled a new menu, a new wine list, and a new staff, and then set about making good on his goal.

The wine list at Brio Vista is small, about 85 wines. However, more than 40 of them are available by the glass. This allows the opportunity to try different wines without having to pay for an entire bottle. Better yet, Scruggs and his wine buyer, Gary Thompson, have listed a wine recommendation for each dish on their menu. A customer is thereby assured the opportunity to taste what Scruggs and Thompson feel are the best matches in the house. Scruggs feels it is important not to be a "wine nazi," to let people discover things for themselves. But a proposal for each course allows the adventurous to try something new.

You should probably be aware that Scruggs is nuts about Riesling. "Riesling caresses food, something like Chardonnay slaps it," he says. Picking a dish that the menu recommends with a Riesling would never be a mistake. Notwithstanding that, there are several food/wine combinations that really sparkled. The favorite appetizer was duck confit and wild mushrooms with scallion crepes ($8). They paired this with a 1997 St. Cosmie ($6 per glass in the restaurant, around $12 a bottle in the stores) from the Cotes du Rhone region of southern France. This wine would not be a good apéritif; it is highly acidic, and the acid somewhat overcomes the fruit. But combined with the very rich confit, the acid cuts through the fat, leaving the mushrooms cloaked in a potent blackberry finish. A textbook marriage of food and wine. A similar act of hocus-pocus occurs when they combine the chicken liver pté with black currant sauce ($6) with a very raspberry-like 1997 Foppiano Russian River Valley Petite Sirah ($8.25 a glass in the restaurant; about $16 in local stores).

Roasted fillet of salmon with Mike's Macaroni Salad ($19) was the preferred entree. The dish was very rich with cream and pepper and cheese. They paired it with a 1997 Gustave Lorenz Reserve Gewürztraminer ($11 per glass in the restaurant; usually $23 in stores). The Gewurz was quite spicy with a floral nose and enough acid to tame this dish nicely. The sweet salmon and black pepper aromas combined with the rosy fragrance of the Gewurz didn't quite evoke an epiphany, but it was genuinely illuminating.

These are just some examples from two restaurants. There are other restaurants in Austin that do a good job, and as time goes on, we will be introducing you to more of them. Both Villim and Scruggs should be very proud of their recognition from The Wine Spectator. However, the important story about these establishments goes far beyond their wine lists. They have demonstrated that they appreciate and celebrate the marriage of food and wine.