On wine and food, Dolly Parton and Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
I love wine. And food. I mean, I love wine and I love food, but what I love most is wine and food together.
I talk about it, teach about it, research and write about it. And I love all of it. I love poetry too, like Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s sonnets. So beautiful.
‘How do I love thee? Let me count the ways’.
As with wine and food together, the ways are endless. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. Then a coincidence happened. I think.
I came across a Ted talk from a journalist from Tennessee called Jad Abumrad. He talked about searching for truth in his work, and he told a story about ‘How Dolly Parton led me to an epiphany’.
I was spellbound. Have you ever felt something had been made especially for you to see?
In his piece, Jad suggests that searching for truth will lead to science, and finding science then leads to wonder.
Truth. Science. Wonder.
He mentions an idea from psychotherapy called ‘the Third’ where two distinct entities, like personalities, commingle and create a ‘third’ separate entity.
I work with wine and food. We look at the biochemistry, the interactions that physiologically take you to a ‘higher’ place. Hello, dopamine. We playfully refer to it as the ZiNG! thing. Perhaps that is our ‘Third’.
‘…that place, where the things we hold as different, resolve themselves, into something new.”
Truth. Science. Wonder.
Look at the chalkboard behind my desk.
I know, from a scientific perspective. that when a wine & food experience is right it can completely change your day. As a friend of mine says: ‘it will elevate the experience’.
Food. Wine. Wonder.
YES, I know there is biochemistry behind it. NO, I am not talking about that today.
I want to remember science bringing me to wonder.
I’m a bit of a hoarder. I pulled out a bundle of notebooks last week-end and surprised even myself. I had dozens of food and wine match-ups recorded over the years, way more than I remembered.
In the TED talk, Jad said:
‘…if you can paint it, vividly, maybe you can freeze it in place, almost like in resin, trapped between past & present’.
Maybe that’s what I’d been hoping to do for my moments. Like these.
… @ Lillette, a restaurant in New Orleans. I’m on a work trip, I don’t know very many people and it’s not going so well. All these new colleagues seem so tired and jaded. How can I get them teamed up with us? I don’t know if I can pull this off. New Orleans is flooded with great wine. The wine business can be harsh, just sayin’. I’m anxious.
I noticed an appetiser. ‘White truffle Parmigian toast, with mushrooms, marrow, veal glacé.’ I love mushrooms. One of the wines by the glass looks promising and thankfully it is within my (also anxious) budget. Jean Jacques Girard Bourgogne rouge. I try them together and boom! The ZiNG! thing happened. Oh my. Goodbye worries for a while.
…@ ONE Midtown in Atlanta. I am friends with the owners of this restaurant. We are always looking for cool food & wine moments and I’m always hoping I can find one they didn’t know about! Several crispbreads came tableside, a carrot-cardamom spread served with them. There may have been another spread as well but if there was I didn’t write it down.
I’m looking for wine inspiration and I see there’s a wine from Romania, something I’ve never tried before. Maybe it will have that Mediterranean savvy I so admire, able to handle multiple food situations. ‘Vio Feteasca Regala’ is what I wrote in the notebook, a white wine (apparently that’s the grape) and not expensive — excellent. Here we go, I try it with the spread.
I had a sharp intake of breath, a little gasp. I remember it vividly.
It was all I could do not to jump up in the middle of the restaurant and tell everyone in the room ‘you have got to try this, right now!’
Oh my gosh, that was a good one. I could not wait to tell Laurie & Todd (the owners). They couldn’t have known about this ZiNG! or they would have told me! I’d made a discovery. Hurray.
…@ home, in Annagassan, Ireland.
My daughter had not been well. She was in town for the night, she needed to just get away and be with her own friends. This made me happy. It didn’t stop me worrying though. She has a medical condition that can strike her at any time, unannounced. I sat there in the kitchen thinking ‘Universe, please give her a break tonight, she needs it’.
I took a few breaths and started dinner, courtesy of my chef hero Nigel Slater. His recipes are a balm, he is like no-one else on earth, I don’t know how he does it. I’d been to the shops earlier when I dropped my daughter in town. I stopped for wine and grabbed a bottle of Beaujolais. I was having ‘Chicken thighs with fennel and leek’ from Nigel’s cookbook ‘EAT’. So simple, so good. The Beaujolais was Collin Bourisset ‘Fleurie’, I think it was €11.99. Whoop de doo.
I cooked, dinner was ready. I vividly remember as I tasted these two things together, a tear happened. My little kitchen supper was now a thing of beauty, better than I could ever have imagined. A sigh of relief came up from somewhere deep and I thought ‘I love my girl, we’re going to be OK’. Life is good.
There are pages of these moments in those notebooks. Perhaps I will share more with you another time.
But for now, dearest wine and food — from me, Dolly and Elizabeth.
I will always love you.
Let me count the ways.
