While individual tastes vary and it may not be worth being too prescriptive, there are a few basic principles that can help in finding a perfect marriage when matching red wine with different styles of beef, a leading wine expert says.

As barbecue and social season gets into full swing across Australia, Master of Wine, Andrew Corrigan says it’s worthwhile re-visiting some of the most attractive pairings between different styles and cooking methods for beef, and wine.

Launching his new book “Table Talk – A guide to food, wine, drinks and table conversation,” in Brisbane recently, Beef Central took the opportunity to quiz Andrew about pairings with some of Australia’s popular beef styles.

He said the often-discussed synergies between red wine and beef were well-deserved. But does the same wine pair well with a highly-marbled AA Co Darling Wagyu rib fillet, as a piece of young, grassfed Tasmanian yearling?

Before offering some suggestions, Andrew provided something of a disclaimer.

“Wine is very flexible, and within reason, almost any wine goes with any food. There are obvious clashes, but it’s easy to go overboard on the quasi-science behind matching the two. But having said that, there are some combinations that most agree work better than others – and it’s great fun exploring them.”

He said the basic rule of thumb was that red wines with higher tannin content (cabernet sauvignon is the best known variety) went better with fattier cuts, or styles of beef. That’s because tannin is a natural palate cleanser that cuts through fat and oil really well.

He said tannins in red wine should not be confused with acid, where more acidic varieties and styles worked best with earthy, savoury, barbecued flavours.

On that basis, here are a few of Andrew’s pairing suggestions:

• Longfed Wagyu (highly-marbled, rich): cabernet sauvignon, or cabernet-heavy blends
• Yearling shortfed or grassfed (lighter, cleaner flavours): varieties with less tannin, such as cooler climate shiraz, producing a lighter spicier style. Examples include Adelaide Hills, Great Western in Victoria, or Queensland’s Granite Belt. These wines lack the big, sweet, rich, chocolaty characteristics that tend to be seen from McLaren Vale and Barossa Valley shiraz.
• More mature grassfed (full-flavoured, grassy/herbaceous flavours): ‘Bigger’ shiraz styles from areas like South Australia, which tend to go with softer, sweeter meats, especially the smokey aroma of barbecued food.

Mr Corrigan said another caveat was that Australians were notorious for drinking a glass of wine and enjoying it for its own sake, then stopping to eat the food, and then going back to what they were drinking.

“That means you can get away with a lot of combinations. If you put on say, a lighter, spicier Shiraz, there may be plenty of people who will say they prefer the richer sweeter, softer Barossa Valley shiraz style, with its characteristic blueberries aroma. The matching with food, in that case, does not come into their thinking, because they are just interested in the richness of the wine, for its own sake – and that’s fine.”

But Andrew suggests that a red wine does not have to be ‘big’ to be good.

“There are some very good ‘big’ wines, but some suffer from being a little too alcoholic. Cabernet sauvignon can still have a lot of tannin and length to it, without being that ‘big’ of a wine,” he said.

“Shiraz tends to be a bigger, richer, rounder wine, but without the tannins – ‘bigness’ is mostly to do with size and richness and chocolaty characteristics. Some wine companies (examples: Wolf Blass, and to a lesser degree, other big South Australian companies like Penfolds and Yalumba) are very good at getting that ‘big’ quality into their wine, and they are terrific wines, occupying a certain part of the red wine market.”

Their sweet aroma tends to go well with softer, sweeter cuts of beef, especially complex, smokey flavoured barbecue styles.

Cooking style, as much as variety of beef, could have a big bearing on wine matchings.

“The richness of those SA shiraz wines is a good match over the barbecue, but people can be quite flexible,” Andrew said.

“Certainly going to something like a casserole, we tend to lean to a softer, more even wine, without the need to match the aggression of full-flavoured barbecue beef. That could include a pinot noir or a lighter style red. Pinot noir is quite seductive, it takes consumers in because it is easy to drink and has this velvety fleshy quality.”

In cuisines like Asian flavours, moving into spicy food territory, Andrew suggests teaming with softer, richer, rounder, sweeter aroma reds. With Indian foods, that Barossa and McLaren Vale style shiraz worked well.

As the above matchings show, the region of origin is often as big a determinant in wine/beef pairings as is the grape variety.

“Even though cab sav and shiraz are relatively close in their style, some cabernets are made more at one end of the scale than the other. There is often an overlap in the way cab sav and shiraz are made. But in contrast, pinot noir and granache are quite different, with a character of their own, with merlot somewhere in between.”

Emerging grape varieties like tempranillo, which carries quite a lot of tannin, and nebiolo and sangiovese could also work well with beef. Tempanillo could be the ‘next big thing’ in Australian wines, Andrew said.

“Nebiolo is very tannic, savoury in character, but a fairly medium-bodied wine. It would go well with complex flavoured, but softer beef dishes, like crumbed veal,” he said.

Equally, for those who prefer white wine, there were some better matches with beef dishes, especially when using lighter, leaner cuts or breed types.

A stronger, less acidic, bigger style like a chardonnay worked well with lighter, leaner yearling type beef, whereas more acidic styles like sauvignon blanc and riesling were not so appropriate.

Asked whether the wine and beef industries should explore closer relationships to leverage off each others’ strengths, he thought there was some logic in exploring the parallels.

“It’s somewhat unusual for a consumer to be sitting down to a piece of really good beef without having a glass of wine on the side,” he said.

On the image and marketing front, there was no question that beef could take some cues from what the wine industry had done in terms of defining characteristics in wine from different regions.

“In wine, unless you can differentiate something in the taste and the origin of the product, the choice becomes little more than a question of price,” he said.

Beef could do well to explore that in more detail. There would always be a segment of the wine-buying community that bought on nothing more than price, and there’s little that could be done about that.

“But equally, there is a huge number of consumers now who are prepared to pay a little more, and sometimes a lot more, for a product with a particular origin, grape variety, method of production or other qualities. The same is beginning to be applied for beef.”

“Ultimately, the goal is to get a level of brand recognition, where consumers will seek the brand out, and buy on that alone, based on previous performance – and pay more for it.”

Just as some wines had particular brand claims like ‘hand-made,’ ‘estate-grown’, ‘basket-pressed’, ‘unfiltered’, ‘old vines’, or ‘organic’, beef could begin to explore more of these qualities. Dry-aged might be one such example.

“If there’s a row of wines in a store and they are all shiraz, it is often a distinguishing feature like that that makes the difference in a purchase decision,” Andrew said.

“That can apply to beef, as much as wine. There will always be the shoppers looking for the beef specials at Woolies. But equally, Woolies now also stocks up-market brands, and speciality butchers are increasingly providing specific claims behind their beef brands.”

He said there were some attempts already to leverage off a region name in both wine and beef brands produced in the same region, such as Coonawarra.

“That could prove interesting in a marketing sense, and a consumer could buy the pair, so to speak.”

Andrew said unlike wine consumers in some countries that tended to select wines on brand-name or ‘status’, Australians tended to put more emphasis on origin, as an indicator of wine style.

Drinking temperature: don’t avoid the fridge

Lastly, Beef Central asked Andrew about his take on serving temperature for red wine, particularly over hotter summer months.

“European room temperature is the benchmark,” he said.

“That means 20-22 degrees C. As a result, most of northern Australia, for most of the year, and southern Australia for parts of the year, are way too hot to serve wines at room temperature. That can mean putting a red in the fridge for half an hour – perhaps more – to bring it down to an ideal drinking temperature.”

“You can’t chill them too far. A red wine left in the fridge a little too long suffers no damage, and will warm-up very quickly, once poured.”

“If it’s way too cold, it simply won’t have any aroma, but there’s a stage where the red wine, even a complex one, will taste cool and have a refreshing quality about it. That’s a good thing.”

“Reds drunk too hot tend to highlight the alcohol content too much – they carry a hot, spirituous quality, which is not what the wine is meant to taste like,” he said.

“Even the Europeans do not believe in room temperature. They keep their wines cool by using cellars, and serve them cool.”

For keen wine drinkers, Andrew suggests investing in a specialised glass-fronted wine storage fridge, which could be bought today for a few hundred dollars.

“That applies particularly for people in the bush who might only restock their supply two or three times a year. Once wine is stored too warm for too long, you are running a real risk of spoilage.”

• Andrew Corrigan’s book, “Table Talk”, would make an ideal Christmas gift for those keen on wine, and wanting to learn more. It’s an easy-read, packed with helpful information and facts to help novice wine drinkers understand and appreciate the product a little more. Click here to access website for details.