Valentines Day Pairings Beyond Your Typical Box of Chocolates

2024 Valentines Pairing 

There are traditional pairings that we all talk about around the Valentine’s holiday; red wine with chocolate or steak, Chardonnay and oysters, Champagne and caviar. While these are all classically tasty, we hope you’ll try something new on for size! The following food and wine pairings are fun, fresh, and incredibly tasty. Here’s what you need to try them out this Valentine’s Day:

- William Chris NV Sparkling Blanc du Bois and Snow Crab legs with lemon garlic butter.
- Lost Draw 2022 Sparkling Pinot Meunier Rosé and lobster, preferably grilled for extra rich flavor. 
- Lost Draw 2021 Dolcetto and Fontina fondue 
- William Chris 2021 Hunter and grilled shish kabobs with onion, bell pepper, pineapple, and your choice of meat(s) 

Why These Pairings Work

While there are many complementary components and aromas to these wines and dishes, the main idea for these pairings centers around the idea of simplicity with complexity. This means that a simple dish could pair best with a complex wine, and likewise, a complex dish could pair best with a simpler wine. For instance, these sparkling wines have a wide range of aromas: from herbaceous to fruity, to funky, to floral - and even more complexity of texture on the palate with bubbles! The best way to highlight these many components with food is to let the lobster and crab lead the dance without overcomplicating it. Then, watch the wine dance around!

On the flip side, Dolcetto is great at being incredibly fruity, so it is the perfect wine to pair with a complex dish without worrying that the wine may occasionally fall flat. If you take a rich cheese like Fontina to pair with the richness of the wine, the wine’s intense fruitiness will shine through as you go from dipping bread to meat to potato to pickled vegetables. 

In the case of a blend, like Hunter, several straightforward components in a dish will cause the different varieties in the blend to be gradually highlighted. Shish kabob causes us to eat one component of the dish at a time and then enjoy the wine as it changes down the kabob. 

 In any case, these pairings work because they are more fun to do with a partner. They cause us to get more involved in the food than just mindlessly eating. The wine not only enhances the pairing but causes us to slow down and savor the experience. We hope that food and friends always enhance your love of wine and that wine does the same for food and friendship in turn.

Words By Kelsey Kramer