Joie Noble Blend (2006) - A Pairing Experiment

I have learned in my years of teaching that understanding why something isn’t true can be very helpful in understanding why what is true is. It helps one find the boundaries or limits. It's also a basic tenet of science (and I'm a scientist). Despite this, you rarely see information on food and wine pairings that don’t work in publications about wine. Today’s posting breaks from this tradition.

Last night for dinner we had herb roasted free-range chicken (fresh thyme, olive oil, lemon, coarse sea salt, and pepper), mashed potatoes (2/3 russet, 1/3 sweet potatoes, milk, butter, and miso paste for some added depth), olive-oil roasted tomatoes, steamed green beans (with parsley and garlic) and steamed whole carrots (with butter and lemon). Chris decided we should have some wine, but at the last minute, so nothing had been purchased to go with the meal. I thought a light red would do well, a beaujolais villages, for instance. But we didn’t have anything that came remotely close to that in our collection. In the end, he pulled out a bottle of Joie Noble Blend (2006) (www.joie.ca/index.htm). We knew it wasn’t an ideal pairing, but it was the best we had at hand, and an interesting experiment.

It wasn’t a horrible pairing, in particular the acid in the wine did well. But the meal brought out aspects of the wine that I hadn’t really ever noticed. I tasted the pinot blanc like never before. It almost tasted like it (the PB) had been very subtly oaked. I know it hadn’t, but that’s the taste that came through for me with this meal. I love this wine for the heady aromatic fruit, but it was quashed by the food. The funny thing is, this wine is great with Thanksgiving dinner, a meal with similar elements. Maybe it was the Italian flavours? (The roasted tomatoes were the most troublesome part of the meal.) I really have no good explanation. Our instincts were right, this was not a great pairing. (But even after the fact it was the best we had available). The good news is, we didn’t drink very much of the wine, so there’s still plenty left for sipping later on the balcony.

Note: According to their website (see above) you can now get Joie wines outside of BC. So for folks reading this from elsewhere, take heart, you too can try your own Joie pairing experiment.