DRINKING WITH SEAFOOD
| Pairing wine and food can be intimidating if you let it. First Rule – drink what you like. Second Rule – don’t worry about it. But – just in case, we’ve got some suggestions from our list for your next visit. |
| 5 things to drink with seafood |
 Champagne! It goes with everything. Seriously. It’s the most versatile beverage there is. Fat? Champagne. Salt? Champagne. Bubbles and acids wash the palate clean; autolytic character (that bready note that Champagne has) plays nicely with the umami notes in many seafoods. Put a nice Pinot Noir-forward option like Bollinger against the mighty Kumamoto Oyster for a luxe pairing. |
 Muscadet. From the Atlantic end of the Loire River, this has nothing to do with the (sometimes sweet) grapey Muscat. Instead, you get crisp orchard fruit flavours, high acids and great texture from long lees aging. We have a few, including this beauty from a subregion called Mouzillons-Tillieres. Try it with an Atlantic (c. virginica) Oyster. |
 Chablis. Chablis = 100% chard from northern Burgundy, grown through fossilized seashells (Kimmeridgean marl, for the nerds). This wine serves any Oyster beautifully. For the Atlantic Oyster, we like village Chablis – steely, with crisp green fruits and the energy of a greyhound at the gate. At the higher end (think Grand Cru), with maybe some oak and greater concentration, the wine stands up against the more intense European Flat, with its iodine and mineral bite. And if you don’t have Chablis, look for any unoaked, cool-climate chard – it won’t let you down. |
 Lager. What complicate things? Crisp, cold and carbonated, lager has that fresh character that chases the Oyster like a splash of sea water over the bow, keeping things bright and forward-moving. Don’t overthink it. |
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| Sake. Full disclosure – I find sake pretty intimidating. There’s a whole new set of terminology to learn (“Junmai”,”Yamahai” and so on) and lots of writing in a language I don’t speak. It’s really hard to know what to expect when you buy it. But – when you get it right, sake really sings. You know how wine can impact the taste of food – think high-acid white wine with an Oyster, where the acid in the wine cuts back the saltiness of the Oyster, and other flavours come through? With sake, the food can actually affect the flavour of the drink. Like steamed rice and plum skin flavours transform into the taste of ripe cantaloupe melons when you’ve just had an Oyster. It’s super cool. These flavour interactions occur because sake, like lots of seafood (and Oysters, natch) has chemistry that enhances umami flavours. Sake has about a fifth the acidity of wine but more than 15 times the glutamic acid. Oysters too are high in amino acids (particularly succinic acid and glutamic acid) and this is why sake and oysters do so much for each other – they amplify each other’s tastes. So when you get the right sake with the right Oyster, everything amps up. |
