In Vino Veritas, In Pizza Amicitia

Life, as I said to Morgan once, is all about choices. Sometimes we get to make our own choices. Other times our choices are made for us. And sometimes, sometimes we have no choice at all.

In food as well as in wine there are choices aplenty, but lately I have been noticing my choices appearing more and more as fundamental dichotomies. Good versus evil, old versus young, there are enough of these dilemmas in modern life to constitute existential crises. But happily, the dilemmas in food are often always welcome ones, and the resolutions always satisfying, whatever the outcome.

Morgan gives me a lot of flak for choosing red wine over white, whenever I can – so let me try to justify my preferences. At a basic level, I prefer the flavours in red wine more – dark fruit, spice, smoke – and I like heft and tannic quality. I like terroir, and the fact that in (good) red wines you can smell the soil, and taste the forest floor. Speaking in generalities, I find white wine to be comparatively insubstantial and does not present much of an experience. I do like the Burgundy whites, which tend to be fuller and have the terroir and minerality that I enjoy. But perhaps I just have not discovered whites that excite me.

With a good red, I give myself over. There is so much more to explore. I close my eyes and summon all my powers of taste and try to pick out the acid, to pick out the fruit, to separate the tannins from the minerals. I compartmentalize and analyze – knowing that each taste, each sensation, only lingers on your tongue for just that split second, before being replaced, or layered over by a new taste, a new sensation.

I suppose what I am saying is that what I appreciate most in wine is nuance. The best wines I have had, have all been rich, complex wines – with layers and textures and structure. A bouquet of oak and tobacco may give way to a silky smooth taste of plum, or blackberry – bolstered by a caustic tinge of acid, perhaps, and the jammy, tannic sensations on the sides of your tongue. And – sweets for the sweet – swirling the wine in your mouth you may taste the sugars; maybe a hint of vanilla, or licorice even. It is like being enveloped, from the inside of your mouth – if that were possible.

But this nuance carries further. The best wines evolve as they breathe, changing subtly as you drink them. Tannins oxidize, acid balances change, flavours get accentuated. It is a marvelous thing. When paired with food, it acts as a foil to the dishes you eat – whether savoury or sweet. I do not know the science of it but this evolution I believe is one of the distinguishing characteristics of good wine. You may chance upon some perfectly drinkable and perhaps even delicious table wine, but odds are that it will not mature, it will not develop as you drink it.

God I am such a snob.

I suppose what I am saying is that – find me a white wine with such nuance, and I will stand corrected. Until then, I’ll stick to what I know and like.

The other great debate that has surfaced in my life recently has to do with pizza – and whether I prefer thick or thin crust. This, I suppose I could answer, but not quite as readily. I have had excellent deep dish pizza and found it to warm my heart and hearth, with hot, fresh dough yielding to every bite. But I believe that my allegiances lie with the thin crust – paper thin, minimally dressed with sauce – and preferably baked in a wood-fired oven. I like it when the air pockets are browned nicely, and when you can audibly break off a piece of the crust.

Because you see, for me pizza is not about the toppings. You can put all the cheeses you want on it, with all the caramelized onions and all the pears and all the figs and all the candied walnuts from a thousand merchant ships. You can cover it with all manner of salumi, or drizzle as much olive oil on it as you like, but everybody knows that pizza is really all about the bread. My perfect pizza is browned to a crisp on the outside – flaky to the touch and crunchy to the bite. But the dough is barely warm on the inside and has that starchy mouthfeel, almost like biting into solid air.

In this though, as in wine, the choice is all about context. I’ll admit that there are times when I would rather one over the other. But in this, as in wine, I am glad that I even get to make the choice at all.



***Title borrowed from the Batali/Bastianich pizzeria in LA (Pizzeria Mozza)