wine's world Le Divorce How wine and food have gone their separate ways. By Mike Steinberger
Posted Monday, Dec. 15, 2003, at 5:41 PM ET
After a long, amicable marriage, wine and food are heading for divorce. Big, syrupy wines are increasingly prevalent while the culinary world is increasingly smitten with an eclecticism that borders on the bizarre and the idea that more is always more (more ingredients per dish, more dishes per meal). Wine and food are moving in roughly the same direction—subtlety and finesse giving way to flash and bang—yet their paths are diverging, making it difficult to bring them together harmoniously at the table.
Take, for instance, the new-wave Australian shirazes and cabernets now washing ashore. Many of these wines taste like spiked blueberry milkshakes that have been blended with a two-by-four. (The oak is, shall we say, pronounced.) If your preference is for wines that leave elephant tracks on your tongue, you probably adore them. But if asked to drink, say, an Elderton shiraz alongside a roast leg of lamb, even those who enjoy these Jerry Bruckheimer-in-a-bottle wines will probably be reaching for the Maalox. These wines aren't fit to accompany meals—they are meals.
Likewise, today's most celebrated and influential chefs—Ferran Adria of Spain's El Bulli, Marc Veyrat of France's La Ferme de Mon Pere and Auberge de L'Eridan, Heston Blumenthal of The Fat Duck, outside of London, to name the most renomme among them—have a wildly inventive approach that, whatever its virtues, falls a bit short when it comes to wine compatibility. What exactly do you pair with Adria's coconut ravioli in soy sauce or his Parmesan cheese ice cream sandwich? Hawaiian Punch and Yoo-hoo spring to mind. Haut Brion does not.
Pairing food and wine is, of course, a fraught subject, and many restaurant-goers get their innards in an uproar trying to find the Holy Grail of combinations. (A smirking sommelier hovering over the table doesn't help.) But who's to say what constitutes a food-and-wine faux pas? If you believe that pairing a portlike zinfandel with a wasabi-coated veal loin in a kumquat and foie gras foam is a masterstroke, that's between you and your stomach. I'm as punctilious as the next wine zealot, but when it comes to combining food and wine, I hang with the drink-and-let-drink crowd: If it works for you, it works. Never serve red wine with fish? Pinot noir is the perfect arm candy for grilled salmon.
To be sure, there are certain loose rules worth observing. If a wine is likely to have you muttering hosannas throughout the meal, the food ought to be kept relatively simple: A 1982 cheval blanc, for example, shouldn't have to share the stage with a slab of rich meat submerged in gravy. Above all, wine should make nice with food and vice versa. But since the food is usually the star attraction, the type of wine will generally be dictated by what's on the plate. Wines well-suited to food are elegant, restrained, even a little demure, and possessing of a good acidic backbone, vital to creating—pardon the '90s-ism—synergy at the table.
Yet this kind of wine is becoming harder to find. One reason is global warming. In just about every winemaking region, summers are getting hotter, which means riper grapes. The riper the grapes, the lower the wine's acidity and the higher its alcohol content. Nowadays, wines routinely tip the scale at 14 and 15 percent alcohol; toss in the jammy fruit—another consequence of excessive heat in the vineyard—and what you get are massive, brooding wines that snarl at any food that comes near.
This might seem a result to be avoided, but in fact many vintners want their wines overripe and over-the-top and so are leaving grapes on the vine longer—"maximum hang time," in vineyard-speak ("dude" optional)—pushing the extraction (i.e., squeezing as much color and tannins out of the grape skins as possible), soaking their wines in new oak, and generally doing everything they can to turn out cabernets and merlots that Make a Statement. This is particularly true in California and Australia, both of which pump out lots of high-alcohol wines that have the viscosity of motor oil.
Winemakers make these confections because there's a market for them, and it's easy to understand why: The wines are fruity, forward, and deliver a quick buzz. They are also popular within influential segments of the wine press, which is no accident—many of these behemoths are essentially pageant wines, designed to stand out in comparative tastings.
When a critic is sampling 60 to 100 wines in an afternoon, those that make the biggest impression are invariably the ones that, well, make the biggest impression. These are the wines with the most alcohol, the most extract, the most new oak, the most everything. Critics generally do their appraising in isolation—that is, without food—and do not include in their tasting notes any indication as to how a wine might fare with a meal. As a result, many wines with very limited dinner-table potential end up walking off with the laurels.
But the growing rift between food and wine cannot be pinned on the wine world alone; the culinary universe is also to blame. Any quibbling about the direction food is taking is invariably dismissed as reactionary, but this is not an argument against culinary progress. (Though whether Adria and Blumenthal and Veyrat represent culinary progress or are vividly demonstrating its limits is debatable.) Grant Achatz of Chicago's Trio shouldn't feel inhibited about serving sea urchin with frozen banana, puffed rice, and parsnip milk simply because the dish does not suggest a particular wine (or any wine, for that matter). But whether you label it surrealism, molecular gastronomy, fusion, or confusion, the trendiest cooking these days is not being done with wine in mind.
The problem is compounded by price-gouging. A 400 percent markup on wines is not only a genteel form of pickpocketing, it creates a situation in which people who are not wealthy or eating on the company's dime find themselves forced to bottom-feed. This is no hardship if a restaurant has put thought and care into its bargain selections, but that's seldom the case, so the budget-conscious diner ends up eating a Rolls Royce meal and drinking a rent-a-wreck wine. Many restaurant-goers, by necessity, simply stop thinking of wine as part of the dining experience.
Restaurant critics, like their wine-reviewing brethren, deserve some of the blame, too. Most food critics don't seem to know or care much about wine, and they evidently assume their readers don't either. When was the last time you read a restaurant review that devoted even a sentence to the wine list? The last time a restaurant critic complained about wine prices? If restaurants got slapped around in the press for peddling plonk or overcharging on wine, they would surely make their wine lists more interesting and affordable, and wine would once again be a full partner at the table.
Of course, there remain plenty of wines, nearly all of them from "Old" Europe—Burgundies, Barolos, Champagnes, German Rieslings, Loires, Rhones, Bordeaux (albeit in dwindling numbers)—that play well with food, and not every chef is combining ingredients the way a 3-year-old combines finger paints. But when fireworks, in the glass and on the plate, is considered the highest virtue, few winemakers and chefs feel they can eschew the pyrotechnics and win critical acclaim.
But as challenging as pairing food and wine has become, there are harder matches to make—like wine and Botox. A participant in one of the more popular wine chat rooms recently reported bumping into a neighbor who was planning a Botox party and looking for some wine recommendations. Among the suggestions in the chat room: a Martinelli zinfandel—specifically, a zinfandel from the winery's Jackass Vineyard. Now that's a perfect match.
Mike Steinberger is Slate's wine columnist. He can be reached at slatewine@gmail.com.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092511/
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Monday, December 15, 2003
Wednesday, December 10, 2003
Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
politics
Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003, at 11:16 AM ET
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way ever since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.
To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092302/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092302
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Meet the Greedy Grandparents Why America's elderly are so spoiled. By Steve Chapman
Posted Wednesday, Dec. 10, 2003, at 11:16 AM ET
When Social Security was founded, offering a federal pension at age 65, most of the people born 65 years earlier couldn't take advantage of it. They were dead. For the lucky ones who lived long enough to collect, the new pension system, founded in 1935, was meant as a modest support in the brief span before they passed on to glory. No more. Since then, life expectancy at birth in America has increased to more than 77 years. For the majority of people, that means lots of time being supported by the government. A working life is now just a tedious interregnum between two long periods of comfortable dependence.
America's elderly have never had it so good. They enjoy better health than any previous generation of old people, high incomes and ample assets, access to a host of medical treatments that not only keep them alive but let them enjoy their extra years, and a riotous multitude of ways to spoil their grandchildren. Still they are not content. From gratefully accepting a basic level of assistance back in the early decades of Social Security, America's elderly have come to expect everything their durable little hearts desire.
They often get their way, as they did recently when years of complaints finally induced Congress and the president to agree to bear much of the cost of their prescription drugs. From the tenor of the debate, you would think these medications were a terrible burden inflicted by an uncaring fate. In fact, past generations of old people didn't have to make room in their budgets for pharmaceuticals because there weren't many to buy. If you suffered from high cholesterol, chronic heartburn, or depression, you were left to primitive remedies, or none. Today, there are pills and potions for just about any complaint—except the chronic complaint that many of them are pricey. It's not enough to be blessed with medical miracles. Modern seniors also want them cheap, if not free.
That's on top of everything else they get. Retirement benefits used to be just one of the federal government's many maternal functions. But in recent years, the federal government has begun to look like an appendage of Social Security. In 2000, 35 percent of all federal spending dollars went to Social Security and Medicare. By 2040, barring an increase in total federal outlays, they'll account for more than 60 percent of the budget. And that's before you add in the prescription drug benefit. Most of the projected growth is due to rising health-care costs, not to the aging of the population, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Retirees eyeing this bounty feel no pangs of guilt, thanks to their unshakable conviction that they earned every dime by sweat and toil. In fact, economists Laurence Kotlikoff and Jagadeesh Gokhale say that a typical man reaching age 65 today will get a net windfall of more than $70,000 over his remaining years. A luckless 25-year-old, by contrast, can count on paying $322,000 more in payroll taxes than he will ever get back in benefits.
Why do we keep indulging the grizzled ones? The most obvious reason is that they are so tireless and well-organized in demanding alms. No politician ever lost an election because he was too generous to little old ladies. A lot of people are suckered by the image of financially strapped seniors, even though the poverty rate among those 65 and over has been lower than that for the population as a whole since 1974. But it's not just the interests of old coots that are being served here. Young and middle-aged adults tend to look kindly upon lavish federal generosity to Grandma because it means she won't be hitting them up for help. Paying taxes may be onerous, but it's nothing compared to the cost, financial and otherwise, of adding a mother-in-law suite to the house. Working-age folks also assume that whatever they bestow upon today's seniors will be likewise bestowed on them, and in the not too distant future. It's not really fair to blame the greatest generation for this extravagance. They are guilty, but they have an accomplice.
It's surely no coincidence that the new drug benefit is being enacted just as the first baby boomers are nearing retirement age. Nor can it be forgotten that the organization formerly known as the American Association of Retired Persons—it's now just AARP—has lately broadened its membership to include all the boomers it can get its wrinkled hands on. AARP, to the surprise of many, endorsed the plan. And what a surprise it is that the prescription drug program, which will cost some $400 billion over the next 10 years, could balloon to $2 trillion in the 10 years following that—when guess-who will be collecting. You would expect taxpayers in their peak earning years to recoil in horror from a program that will vastly increase Washington's fiscal obligations for decades to come. In fact, they—make that we—can see that the time to lock in a prosperous old age is now, before twentysomethings know what's hit them.
Boomers have gotten our way ever since we arrived in this world, and the onset of gray hair, bifocals, and arthritis is not going to moderate our unswerving self-indulgence. We are the same people, after all, who forced the lowering of the drinking age when we were young, so we could drink, and forced it back up when we got older, so our kids couldn't. On top of that, we're used to the best of everything, and plenty of it. We weren't dubbed the Me Generation because we neglect our own needs, Junior. If politicians think the current geezers are greedy, they ain't seen nothin' yet.
But responsible middle-aged sorts may yet be brought to their senses when they realize that their usual impulse to get all they can will sooner or later collide with another boomer obsession: the insatiable desire to furnish our kids with every advantage known to humanity. Load Social Security with more obligations than it can bear, and our precious offspring will be squashed under the weight. To fund all the obligations of the Social Security system, payroll taxes will have to more than double by 2040—on top of whatever it costs to buy all those prescription drugs. At that point, our children will realize the trick we've pulled and start to hate our guts. That would be a cruel blow to a generation that thinks of itself as the most wonderful parents in history.
To avoid that fate, boomers need to recognize the need to stop writing checks that today's youngsters will have to cash. With the eager help of our own parents, we've created an entitlement that is fast becoming unaffordable. To bring Social Security into conformity with reality, we'll have to resign ourselves to a higher retirement age reflecting our prospective vigor and life expectancy. We'll have to accept more stringent controls on Medicare spending and take more responsibility for our own medical needs. We'll have to abandon our assumption that the point of the health-care system is to keep each of us alive forever. At some point—don't worry, not anytime soon—we will have to embrace a duty to stop functioning as a fiscal burden on our children and start serving as a nutritional resource for worms.
Steve Chapman is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
Article URL: http://www.slate.com/id/2092302/
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=print&id=2092302
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