“Ah! Platter” said Enrico, diminutive table twirling owner of Ristorante Posticino in Sea Point, spying my review copy of The Food & Wine Pairing Guide by Katinka van Niekerk and Brian Burke (Struik Lifestyle, 2009) yesterday. “No something much more useful” I replied. For how else would you know what to drink with pofadders (“braaied stuffed sheep’s intestines”) if you were a winemaker considering a shot at stardom in WOSA’s upcoming Braai Book? The answer: “Pinotage… [a cultivar] constantly sunbathing in the nude.” As opposed to Shiraz, “a slutty wine or ‘the best stripper in town.’” Descriptions you’d never find in po-faced Platter that once rejected my tasting note for a banana flavoured Pinotage as “suitable for KwaZulu-Natalians” with contempt.

Katinka with food

But it certainly does look like a pocket Platter circa 1980: Soviet red cover with gold inlays and 324 pages. Platter 2010, launched on Thursday, has copied the font and gold lettering but replaced the cardinal’s red with an “elegant” (I prefer funereal) black cover. At R135, F&WPG is 10% cheaper than the sighted stockpile. No specific brands are punted unlike Platter where the brand of the Cape’s most photogenic winemaker acclaimed as Winery of the Year is the ultimate triumph of the sighted tasting process. Intellectually, the two guides are worlds apart: a guide to matching food and wine is all about philosophy and pleasure while a sighted wine guide is all about selling copies of your guide.

As most folk drink wine with a meal, some help on getting the match right is invaluable. The French have to make do with an 82 yard old philosopher of taste, Jacques Puisais, peddling what to drink with pink lamb chops (a 27-year old Chinon red) from a “cosseted chinon mansion” according to the Washington Post, paid court by “Alice Waters of the celebrated Chez Panisse in Berkeley” and a Louisiana “food impresario seeking help in setting up a “jazz menu” to combine Cajun style eating and listening.” Thankfully Katinka and Brian have set their sights slightly lower.

Matching wine with lamb in France today can be tricky. Earlier this month I dined with an Alsatian winemaker at Auberge de la Bruche in Dachstein. We ordered lamb and a Rhône blend to go with it. Warned that Alsatian lamb had a strong flavour, I was surprised to discover it tasted exactly like Kassler and wished we’d ordered a bottle of Domaine Blum Riesling rather than the Rhône. So either Alsatian lambs have curly tails or he was right and “since we’re speaking English they’ve probably run out of lamb and think we won’t be able to tell the difference.” Fortunately neither of us was Jewish or Moslem.

Puisais’ latest insights on the philosophy of matching food and wine have just appeared under the catchy, if clichéd title I Taste, Therefore I Am and the Post opines “the philosophy of taste as practiced by Puisais is not the windy lyricism of restaurant reviews or wine labels. It is an effort by a trained scientist and irrepressible epicurean to document what happens when people experience food and wine and to educate them about how to make it a more authentic experience that reinforces their human bonds.”

Katinka with wine

Which pretty much sums up the efforts of Katinka and Brian, although I do miss the gusts of windy lyricism kept alive in organs like Platter. So how do K&B match wine with food? Well it all comes down to balancing weight, flavour intensity and pairing wines with the five primary taste sensations (sweet, acid, salty, bitter and umami) plus perhaps a sixth sensation, perception of fat.

Some of the recommendations are revelations. Did you know that “peanut sauces work particularly well with Fernão Pires”? Me neither. Or that a supple Merlot is the best match for liver in caul fat, colloquially known as skilpadjies? No wonder one Platter pundit dissed the Eagle’s Nest Shiraz when she matched it with take-away Woolies lasagna a couple of years ago – a better bet for lasagna is a medium-bodied Sangiovese or Barbera or a lightly oaked Pinotage or Pinot Noir. Luckily after this slight hiccup, the eagle soared to much wine show glory so the only damage done was to the taster’s XXXL ego.

The book is bursting with fascinating facts: Carpaccio is named after a Renaissance painter who used a certain shade of red reminiscent of wafer-thin slices of beef while Abram Perold’s first name for his crossing of Pinot Noir and Hermitage was Herminot which he discarded in favour of Pinotage. Where do they find these trivial pursuit questions? For lovers of food and quizzes, F&WPG is a most appropriate Christmas stocking filler and goes well with all wines.

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