I’m sat here writing this post from the beautiful hills of Piemonte, where I’ve managed to slope off to for the long weekend. One slight issue with this is the complete impossibility of getting hold of a bottle of French Viognier out here. Well never fear, I planned ahead and did all my tasting in the week (and suffered a suitable mid week hangover). One thing I must admit is that I didn’t do the food pairing, I just didn’t plan in out. But there’s no reason for you guys to do the same.
Viognier is fruity, yet fairly full bodied. One thing that is fairly common too is the medium to low acidity in the wines too. Basically you want to avoid too many fatty foods. That’s why you start thinking off healthy options. Think through menus of the restaurants you’ve been too recently, what were they? Grilled chicken? Grilled seafood? Well let’s go with that then!
Because of the fruitiness of the wine, you can have a good ol’ play with what to have with it. A nice crunchy fruit and salad salsa or some fruit based chutney would go pretty great I think.
One thing to beware though is to double and treble check the alcohol content of the wine before you go off on a tangent with chillies or any other heat. Remember that heat in the food can make you taste the alcohol burn even more, so even if the producer has somehow balanced out the high alcohol level of the wine, you can bugger that up with a bit of fiery grub. Anything much over 13% I just wouldn’t bother. Enjoy the fruit, enjoy your chargrilled meat and fish, and leave the chillies for next week!
Cheers!
Other posts in NWTW Week 17:
#NWTW Week 17: Viognier, France (Part One)
#NWTW Week 17: Viognier, France (Part Two)
#NWTW Week 17: Sunning Grapes in the South of France
#NWTW Week 17: Viognier – One of the Wine World’s New Favourites
