Champagne and Buttered Popcorn

There are many reasons that I was grateful to meet with Alto sommelier Eric Zillier on Wednesday. First, it was a grim, slushy afternoon and the bar was softly lit and warm—in my opinion, the essentials for a fantastic bar. Next, Eric Zillier is an award winning expert. I, on the other hand, am the type of woman who buys the same jug of Yellow Tail every time she invites friends over for dinner. I hoped that with his guidance, I could start planning my wine purchases according to something more than their ability to act as a social lubricant. My final reason was a selfish one—I had been invited to dinner by an Italian guy with whom I had a misguided romantic entanglement. I wanted bowl him over with my sophisticated wine choice and be in a taxi home before dessert.

Eric Zillier has many notches in his sommelier belt—under him, Alto won its first Wine Spectator Grand Award. To create the restaurant's wine list, Zillier traveled throughout the Alto Adige region of Italy, compiling a meticulously curated selection of over 900 varieties. He grew up in Wisconsin and attended college with the intention of joining the Foreign Service. However, after a year in the South of France during school, he succumbed to the gastronomical bug that infects so many of our restaurant luminaries and has been working in wine ever since.

I had hoped for a tidy checklist of dos and don'ts, but quickly realized it wasn't so simple. He referred to the first rule as the "anti-rule". Don't, he cautioned, under any circumstance, become preoccupied with wine dogma (the whole white with fish, red with meat situation). The real key to stellar wine pairing is knowing what you like and following basic guidelines so that the wine doesn't overpower the food.

Fine. But, all this freedom and open-mindedness was making me a little nervous. What if my instincts led me in the wrong direction? There are undoubtedly people out there who believe that Lancer's is the obvious complement to foie gras. As with any aesthetic pursuit, how can you ever really know if you have taste?

Zillier explained that missteps always occur on the way to connoisseurship and that they shouldn't deter you from experimenting. When pushed a little further, he also conceded that there were some classically bad pairings. First, he warned me that highly tannic wine amplifies the effect of pepper. So, while you are at liberty to pair your wines however you darn please, a full-bodied red will make your pepper-crusted lamb chops so spicy that you'll barely taste them. Similarly, a big red will increase the fishiness that defines oilier fish.

Apparently, one of the hardest wines to pair is a big Chardonnay—the oakiness and high alcohol common among California versions of the varietal steal the limelight from the food. That said, any enormous, fruit-driven wine might produce the same effect. When Zillier pairs wines, he tries to choose bottles that let the food remain in the spotlight. While there are times when this should not be the objective, I believe that it is the most useful guideline to follow in our every day lives. Rarely, do we find ourselves with a five hundred dollar bottle of wine to savor. More often than not, we want to choose a wine that will highlight the meals that we prepare for friends and family.

To this end, the most versatile wines tend to be more acidic with less oak. You should, of course, always keep the preferences of your guests in mind. But, according to Zillier, Riesling is a dependable white that pairs well with many different dishes. Pinot Noir is a similarly forgiving and adaptable red. He also suggests pairing regional cuisines and ingredients with their respective wines. For example, asparagus from the Loire Valley goes nicely with the Sauvignon Blanc that hails from the same region.

Like the vast majority of sommeliers with whom I've spoken, Zillier dispelled the white wine, fish/ red wine, meat rule. It is more useful, he argues, to pair food and wine based on the particular character of a dish. For example, a crisp white wine probably wouldn't enhance the experience of eating monkfish wrapped in bacon. Typically, earthy foods like mushrooms and truffles pair well with earthy wines like burgundy.

But, in what had become a pattern, Zillier amended this guideline by saying that, sometimes, the exact opposite works just as well. Using the "Ying Yang" approach, you can pair a mushroom dish to a Riesling, drawing on the lightness of the wine to enhance the earthiness of the mushrooms. Some of Zillier's favorite pairings include Alto's maccheroni with duck confit and chestnuts with a Cotes du Rhone and unoaked Sangiovese with pizza.

At one point, I asked Zillier what he believed to be the most overplayed wine pairing. The sommelier pondered for a moment, then admitted it was champagne and caviar. As someone who has always harbored clichéd Great Gatsby fantasies of champagne fountains and glistening mounds of caviar, his choice left me aghast. I challenged him to think of a better pairing for bubbly. Without a moment of lag time, Zillier said, "buttered popcorn". "Caviar" he said, "pairs much better with vodka".

Yet, throughout the interview, Zillier was clearly uncomfortable with establishing rules. He expressed the belief that the best way to become wine savvy is to listen, keep an open mind and be willing to try new things. Far too often, people grasp on to wine generalizations, without considering how they actually taste. It is this type of static wine "connoisseurship" that deters people from experimenting.

After I gathered a wealth of general wine pairing tips, I wanted some targeted insider information. I broke down my situation, if a little dishonestly, telling Zillier that I was attending a dinner party (I was too self-conscious to tell him it was a date) at an Italian friend's house. Although I didn't know what he was preparing, I suspected that it was spaghetti with mushrooms and asked him for a wine that would match. Zillier suggested that I go to Crush Wine Merchants on 57th street and ask them for a medium-bodied, Italian red, preferably from Tuscany or Sicily. I took his advice and ended up with a Montepulciano D'abbruzo. Predictably, the Italian guy stood me up, but the wine was fantastic.

— Written by Cecilia Estreich

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