Is it Possible to Pair Wine and Cigars?
March 30, 2012
Pairing wine with cigars is really not much different than pairing wine with food. I’m sure this is a subject that I could get in MUCH greater depth on in the future, but I may need to look for a little assistance from a true cigar connoisseur to examine their take on this pairing situation. I’m obviously coming at this from a wine perspective, and for now I have it categorized under the Facts section of this website i.e. short bite-size pieces of info.
The way that I look at it is this: I have personally found it extremely difficult to appreciate all the subtle nuances of, let’s say, an Austrian Gruner Veltliner if I have a mouthful of cigar smoke. The most successful cigar pairings that I’ve ever experienced are with Fortified wines (Ports, Sherries etc.), and full bodied red wines (Cab, Zin, Shiraz etc.). The reason these pairings were so successful was that they maintained the integrity of the wine. However, a cigar connoisseur would maybe disagree and say that the wine overpowered and therefore masked the flavor of the cigar. Once again, we are greeted with the old “everyone has a different palate” rhetoric, but with me preferring wine over cigars, I’m always going to favor a wine that over-powers a cigar rather than vice-versa.
I don’t want to rule out whites altogether. To me it seems that it would be beneficial to have a crisp, light and refreshing liquid in-between puffs on a cigar. Will it contribute to the overall “X Factor” of the wine pairing? No, I don’t think so, but it will certainly help to refresh your palate in-between drags.
As I said, this topic really could do with a little deeper examination, but this is where I’m at for now.
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