Gastronomy is classically defined as the art of eating well. For me, an essential part of eating well is drinking well.
Few things improve the pleasure of a meal so much as good wine. A glass by itself can be enjoyable, but a bite and a sip together create beauty in a way that either alone can never achieve.
People who love food and wine have long understood this joyous combination. But in some important ways, the connection between food and wine is fading.
This is impressionistic, but often I see people of all ages taking a glass of wine or a cocktail with them from the bar to a table, finishing it and then drinking nothing with their meal.
Gabriela Davogustto, the wine director at Clay in Harlem, which has been celebrated for its list, agrees. “It’s really shocking to me that people order a steak and eat it with water,” she said. “They’re not thinking about what they will drink that will enhance the experience.”
It’s not that they are doing anything wrong. I think it simply doesn’t occur to people to want to have something more with their meal. Maybe that is the influence of cocktail culture. Many restaurant reviews nowadays dwell on cocktails, but don’t even mention wine.
Not that the beverage of choice with a meal must be wine. Books have been written about the pleasures of beer with food, and some argue that it’s even better than wine.
I’ve had great meals with beer, like German lager with sausages and sauerkraut. At Dean’s, the new neo-British pub on the border of SoHo and the South Village, it’s great fun to drink a pint of Guinness with a plate of oysters. It’s a tried-and-true pairing in Ireland and Britain.
But for me, no beverage is as limber and versatile with food as wine. Every good restaurant has a wine list, and even many cuisines without a historical connection to wine have found brilliant ways of integrating wine into their meals. Consider Lei, Pinch Chinese and Junoon in New York, Anajak Thai in Los Angeles and Indienne in Chicago, just to name a handful. Dean’s has a terrific wine list as well, and when I finished with the oyster course, I moved on to wine.
Wine consumption is falling, but Matthew Conway, a longtime sommelier in New York who now owns the Tippling House, a wine bar in Charleston, S.C., does not think that’s the issue. Instead, he points to both the decline of the sommelier in American restaurants after the Covid pandemic and the rising price of wine in restaurants.
Wine has “lost its place at the table,” he said. “A lot of chefs and operators are to blame for that. They could have helped them embrace beverages at the dinner table.”
Mr. Conway believes sommeliers played a key role not just in pouring the wine but in selling it.
Without sommeliers to inspire guests with the stories behind the bottles and by linking wine or other beverages culturally to the food being consumed, Mr. Conway said, diners are often adrift. Some may feel comfortable to make the leap to picking a bottle. Others are afraid to make choices without someone to shepherd them.
Mr. Conway also believes wine helps to create memorable social experiences.
“Chefs, restaurant operators and owners put less emphasis on wine, and all beverages, as part of the dining experience,” he said. “A chef can make a perfect dish and the only thing that can make it better is the right wine. Not just to enhance the flavors and presentation, it enhances the experience of those at your table. A lot of great things have happened at tables where wine is being poured.”
I’m not a stickler for the sorts of precise pairings that sommeliers care about, especially for people eating at home, without an expert on hand.
With rare exceptions, like a fragile, complex older bottle, which needs simple dishes that won’t overwhelm the delicate wine, it’s hard to make a mistake. I’ve had red wines with oysters and white wines with steak. It’s not the end of the world. It can in fact be quite enjoyable, though I’d always prefer, say, a Chablis with oyster or a Chianti Classico with steak.
Even the least flattering pairing can be better than no pairing at all. I was always told that wine was really difficult to match with eggs, except maybe Champagne. But I used to have a ritual, when landing in France, of finding an omelet and a glass of Beaujolais. I loved it, regardless of the science of the match. The wine made the meal an occasion to remember.
Paradoxically, as restaurants seem to put less emphasis on wine service, they are counting more than ever on wine to contribute to their bottom lines. Many restaurants are charging much more, proportionately, for glasses of wine as well as for bottles.
For many years, the standard price of a glass of wine in restaurants was the wholesale price of the bottle. That is, if a restaurant paid $12 wholesale for a bottle, it would charge $12 for a glass.
But wine prices have gone up. It takes expertise, which too many restaurants no longer invest in, to find good, moderately priced bottles. Instead, many restaurants are taking the easy way out, charging $20 or more for mediocre glasses of wine.
Similarly, the standard price for a bottle in restaurants used to be three times the wholesale price. Now, too many restaurants are charging four and even five times the wholesale price, trying to achieve the profits they can’t make otherwise through wine sales.
The need for such steps testifies to the dysfunction of the current restaurant business model, perhaps, but it doesn’t make sense on any level to gouge customers. Certainly, it doesn’t encourage people to drink wine.
The wine trade argues that younger people are drinking less than their elders. That’s not entirely true. I see plenty of young people everywhere I go drinking wine, often in natural wine bars where the food choices are rudimentary at best.
I rarely see young people drinking wine in restaurants, though. Is it because of the price? The lack of sommeliers? Popular culture, which treats wine as if it’s a cocktail? I’m not sure, but whatever the reason, I fear they are missing out.
To be clear, there’s never only one way to drink wine. Even as wine has been considered a mealtime staple for centuries, it’s been many other things, too. It’s required for certain religious rituals and always available in bars and taverns, where the food might be limited.
