Matching flair

When it comes to food and wine matching, the Americans lead the way. OK, so we have a few sommeliers this side of the pond who are particularly good at it - but most of the country doesn't get to eat at restaurants that employ sommeliers.

Then we have our wine suppliers. The more forward-thinking of them will include the basics of food and wine matching in their training. And we have courses run by venerable institutions such as the Wine & Spirit Education Trust, but these can be far and few between, and they cost. No, the Americans realised a long while ago that food and wine matching was a way to get them hooked.

Now we all know that the Americans have got some way to go to catch up with us Europeans on the wine-drinking front. But it's precisely this kind of blank canvas that has encouraged them to develop such sophisticated wine programmes. The new Copia centre in the Napa Valley is a case in point, with its numerous kitchen theatres and interactive "press this, sniff that" installations in the wine "museum" (eat your heart out, Vinopolis).

California's wine giants have played a big part. Beringer, Mondavi, Fetzer and others offer extensive wine education programmes, with on-site restaurants staffed by top chefs, to show off their food and wine matching skills. And I've got round all of them in my time, except Trinchero Family Estates. "Trinchero's training is different from the others. The emphasis is on fun - and the on-trade," claims its UK PR, Emma Wellings.

Intrigued, I did some digging. Called the Vine to Dine programme, it's now in its fourth year, with about 300 events annually, catering for five people to 1,000. And it did look fun.

There was the Tongue Fu Challenge, where participants learn the meaning of wine terms such as flat, thin, flabby and hot, and are challenged to correctly identify wines which have been slightly altered to accentuate fruit acidity, volatile acidity, sugar, tannin and alcohol. And there's the Aroma Wheel of Fortune, where you learn how to define wine aromas, understand faults and develop an aroma vocabulary.

Plus Iron Chef, where teams prepare their own recipes and accompanying wines, not to mention market visits, and even the odd fishing trip for Dungeness crab, around the nearby Farallon Islands.

"We have a tremendous amount of trade customers and we needed somewhere to entertain them," says its dashing president, Roger Trinchero. "Plus, restaurateurs are craving to find out ways to sell more wine. If you have informed wait staff your chances of selling more wine increases dramatically." Quite.

And more of his wine, hopefully. Trinchero Family Estates now ranks as the fifth-largest wine company in the USA, with an annual production of 10 million cases. Its wines are sold in 70 countries around the world, and include the on-trade-friendly Montevina Winery, in the Sierra foothill wine region, a joint venture with Aussie wine company Reynolds, and the Sutter Home Winery, home of Sutter Home White Zinfandel.

It was White Zinfandel that made their fortune, invented in 1973 by Bob Trinchero, now chief executive officer of the company. And sales are still booming, with Sutter selling 4.5 million cases a year, from a total of 20 million cases sold in the country annually.

"For many people in the USA, White Zinfandel is as premium as it gets," Roger Trinchero explains. It's pink, it's sweet, enough said, though theirs is less sweet than most - but Trinchero Family Estates has plenty of other wines to tempt the on-trade.

One of my favourites, incidentally, was a $12 bottle of Refosco, a grape known for its vigour in the Friuli region of Italy. "But I don't think the American public are ready for esoteric Italian varieties right now," Trinchero says. They are ready for their wine training programme, though, headed up by Barry Wiss, director of education and hospitality.

In fact, it was all Wiss's idea. "It's been my vision for a long time," says the ex-food and beverage director for Sheraton Hotels. "We always did wine seminars, that's pretty standard, everybody does that. But we thought, if we could relate to someone's passion, and feed that passion, that would be a great thing. But it had to be something they could use in a business environment."

Wiss disappears for a couple of minutes, returning - no, staggering - under the weight of a large wooden roulette wheel. "This is the Aroma Wheel," he announces, placing it on the table. "I had a local carpenter make it up for me. Go on, have a spin." It lands on purple - "faults" - and I pick up the corresponding phial, which smells overwhelmingly musty. Corked wine. "See, it works," Wiss smiles, triumphantly.

Wiss and his team also dabble in a bit amateur dramatics, putting on skits for his audience, aimed at spotting the mistake. For example, a waiter tries to steer a customer into drinking red wine with his steak instead of the white he had requested. "We teach people to identify the tastes of their customers, not which wines work well with what dish," Trinchero says.

Wiss also works closely with the winery's executive chef Jeffrey Starr. "I have a problem with the whole concept of food and wine matching," Starr declares. "It has this notion that you have to pick a specific wine with a specific dish, and that's really not true. Why do we worry so much about it? If it tastes good for you then it's a good pairing.

"Here, we feel food can be prepared in such a way that a dish can go with lots of different wines - by adjusting the sweetness, sourness, saltiness and bitterness. It's more about making sure that the food doesn't hurt the taste of the wine. Why should I have Cabernet Sauvignon with steak when I want Chardonnay? If I play around with the ingredients a little, I can make it work with Chardonnay." Radical stuff.

"One of the most important elements is team-building," concludes Wiss, who is planning to bring the programme to Europe, albeit a travelling version (there's a digital version of the Aroma Wheel, which travels on his laptop). "And it has to be fun - it's a rare group that's not yelling by the end." I can't wait. n

For information on Trinchero wines, contact PLB on 01342 318282.