When I first began writing in magazines about wine I was very excited to meet winemakers. I had toured wineries and learned all about the process involved in turning grapes into bottles of very good beverage, but meeting the people who actually madethat beverage was something else again. And so it stuck in my mind when I interviewed a winemaker (who has since become a very good friend) and I asked, “Is there anything you absolutely have to have to make good wine?” and he immediately responded “Beer. It takes a lot of beer to make a good wine.”

Having spent hundreds of days at wineries since that time, I can confirm, it doestake a lot of beer to make good wine. At the end of a long day dragging bins of grapes to the crusher or hauling heavy hoses among the tanks or tasting through dozens of young and terribly tannic samples of wine in the works a winemaker (like a visiting journalist and educator) wants something cold, refreshing and not wine. 

Marketing gurus have sometimes seen beer drinkers and wine drinkers as two different groups, but the geek in me wants to emphasize that we are the same group. I’m just as fascinated by how yeast influences flavor, how different types of hops impact the texture of a beer, how the type of grain and where it was grown affect the finished brew. It’s the same as it is with wine – the final product is a coalescence of influences and whether we call it terroir in wine or grain source in beer, we still have a huge range of variables that give us a wonderfully satisfying variety of flavors, aromas and textures when we get our lips on the liquid.

This all comes to mind because at VeritageMiami, the spring lifestyle festival I direct in Miami, Florida, opened this year with a Craft Beer Tasting. It was a bit raucous and lots of fun, and it was also very educational. With more than 50 brewers on hand (each pouring anywhere from three to eight different beers), you could taste everything from a light passion fruit-flavored beer (surprisingly delicious with a wonderfully tart profile) to heavy porters with the appearance of molasses. 

While the media is still buzzing with debates over just what constitutes a “craft” beer (the main argument is about the size of the brewery), I was content to taste different beers and to confirm there are as many food-pairing possibilities with beer as with wine. Where I think beer gets an edge are in an area where many wines have issues: matching the beverage with spicy food.

The trick with spicy food is not so much about what beverages pair well, it’s about what does notwork. This of chili pepper as a bit like edible sandpaper – just as scraping your skin on a rough surface makes it more sensitive, spicy ingredients make your taste buds more sensitive. If you have something spicy followed by a glass of wine with a lot of alcohol, for example, you’ll feel a burning sensation – spice makes you perceive wine as having more alcohol. The same issue comes into play with tannin, that substance in wine that makes your cheeks and gums feel a drying sensation. Spiciness accentuates the effect of tannin. 

The solution for a wine drinker is to consume spicy food with lower alcohol wine (sorry, the 15% abv garnacha is not going to work with Szechuan chicken), and preferably a wine with little or no tanning. Your best bet is a lower alcohol, softer and fruity wine like Beaujolais for red and among whites, riesling or semillon, both of which have lower alcohol. For the beer drink, with few exceptions, the alcohol levels are around five to eight percent and tannin, while present at low levels in some beers, isn’t much of a factor.

Tannic wines are also poor matches for delicately seasoned dishes (sushi, I’m thinking of you), so use a similar reasoning in pairing wine with your raw fish. Sake works because, while it has higher alcohol than most wine, it has no tannin. 

Writing all this has made me both thirsty and hungry, so I just called my neighborhood Chinese restaurant, and asked them to include a Hoegaarden (a Belgian wheat beer with 4.7% abv) with my order of Szechuan chicken. It takes a lot of beer to make a blog post, too.

The trick with spicy food is not so much about what beverages pair well, it’s about what does notwork. This of chili pepper as a bit like edible sandpaper – just as scraping your skin on a rough surface makes it more sensitive, spicy ingredients make your taste buds more sensitive. If you have something spicy followed by a glass of wine with a lot of alcohol, for example, you’ll feel a burning sensation – spice makes you perceive wine as having more alcohol. The same issue comes into play with tannin, that substance in wine that makes your cheeks and gums feel a drying sensation. Spiciness accentuates the effect of tannin. 

The solution for a wine drinker is to consume spicy food with lower alcohol wine (sorry, the 15% abv garnacha is not going to work with Szechuan chicken), and preferably a wine with little or no tanning. Your best bet is a lower alcohol, softer and fruity wine like Beaujolais for red and among whites, riesling or semillon, both of which have lower alcohol. For the beer drink, with few exceptions, the alcohol levels are around five to eight percent and tannin, while present at low levels in some beers, isn’t much of a factor.

Tannic wines are also poor matches for delicately seasoned dishes (sushi, I’m thinking of you), so use a similar reasoning in pairing wine with your raw fish. Sake works because, while it has higher alcohol than most wine, it has no tannin. 

Writing all this has made me both thirsty and hungry, so I just called my neighborhood Chinese restaurant, and asked them to include a Hoegaarden (a Belgian wheat beer with 4.7% abv) with my order of Szechuan chicken. It takes a lot of beer to make a blog post, too.