Wine pairing with music

There are a couple threads on this in the past, but wanted to start out fresh with some different questions for discussion, influenced by a recent episode of The Wine Makers podcast.

With COVID quarantine most of us are limited to drinking at home. Though I enjoy classic rock, classical music, and jazz, I usually put on some generic background music (think of Starbucks cafe music) to fill the room.

Do you make an effort to listen to music when drinking wine, or find that it detracts from the tasting experience? For those who do listen, do you try to pair certain music genres/artists with specific wines?

Paging Robert Dentice…

Reach out to Clark Smith of WineSmith Wines. Clark is a big proponent of wine pairings and music. I attended a wine tasting with Clark a number of year ago in Charlotte and Clark was pairing a particular red wine with different music selections. No doubt that the music selection changed the wine to some degree. Clark probably has some you tube videos or content on his website.

Personally, I’m usually watching TV while drinking wine with dinner. I enjoy all kinds of music, but I don’t have a quality audio set up at the house besides the randomness of Alexa, or Music Choice TV channel, or iTunes. If we host a tasting (pre COVID), we usually select a crowd friendly Music Choice TV channel.

James

I’m looking for something to go with Mahler’s 5th.

As a professional classical musician (violinist) whose dad is a wine journalist, this subject is particularly close to me. I have played a few informal concerts in wine bars, and had a formal presentation set up with my dad in which I harmonized certain solo violin music with certain wines. I also find wine (in moderation) to be a wonderful complement to chamber music rehearsals…

Great question Brian. Mood, music, and alcohol consumption definitely go hand in hand. Perfection for me is when I’m prepping and cooking all day and I play a playlist of my '80s college music, which is post punk or punk influenced rock n roll. I can get into a bottle or two of wine so easily and really reflect on it as I am doing my thing. Once the crew comes in Ill switch to a mix of late '70 and '80s rock mixed with old school country rock. This playlist will have Hank Williams JR, Boston, Beegees REO, David allen Coe, Chicago, ELO, Merle Haggard, Skynyrd, Cars, Nash Kato, Journey etc. This is more mellow and has something for everybody, and nothing anybody dislikes. For more intimate scenes, say with 4 of less people, Im not sure if music is even a part of my thought process. I used tp play barely audible classical. Man there are so many different milieus where a different, very important genre of music is played. I love it when my kids get on the music as well. Certain times call for their music. They find new and super cool stuff all of the time.

Is there any other way to drink wine, but with music? [cheers.gif] I say this only half in jest. Almost all of my ‘major’ wine evenings at home, or at my brother-in-law’s, across town, include music. This covers a wide range of genre’s (excluding rap!). We both have good stereo equipment and are drawn to excellent recordings: those with wide dynamic range, definition of instruments, sound stage and expression. A bit of age doesn’t hurt, either. Very similar to the wines we like to drink!

I do occasionally try to pair a special record with a special wine. I can’t say that I have specific genre preferences like Jazz for Riesling and Rock for Syrah or something like that. The style of music definitely has an impact of the way I taste/interpret the wine.

One thing I found that is fastening is that just like wine some days I am more in tune to music and can really hear every little detail in music and other days I just can’t focus on the details. Similar to when you have one of those wine nights where everything just tastes glorious.

German Riesling!

When done well, pairing wine and music can be a mildly psychedelic experience. It can produce some synesthesia for sure.

The challenge is that it is like pairing food and wine- two things you love independently may not work well together- and things you might never expect to pair can be transcendent. I find it wine and song dependent vs. broader music style and and region or varietal dependent.

We’ve been heavily into it for about 2yrs, doing live in person events (blind and non blind), putting playlists out with releases, and as part of our weekly interactive series (with live musicians pairing music and wine).

This week we may be the first (?) winery that has commissioned an EP of original music to pair with the wines. It will be available for download later this week for mailing list members.

Not wine, but I was thinking Benedictine.

As mentioned upthread, Clark Smith, who did a guest spot, has written on the subject of wine and music.

Wine and Music

He was also on NPR regarding this subject:

Music Alters Wine’s Taste, Vintner Insists

The Doors may seem like an unusual musical choice for a wine bar. If Cabernet dominates the tasting list, however, the sommelier would do well to play some of the group’s angriest songs — at least according to a theory espoused by vintner Clark Smith.

Smith, co-founder of the R.H. Phillips Vineyard and senior enologist at Vinovation, a wine consultation firm, proposes that a wine’s taste is dramatically impacted by the music that accompanies it.

Cabernet Sauvignon, for example, is best when paired with “music of darkness” — thanks to the ability of rage-filled songs to smooth out similarly aggressive tannins, Smith’s theory holds. An idyllic Mozart composition, on the other hand, works in reverse, potentially ruining a good Cab.

“I think everybody recognizes that music has moods,” says Smith. “Quite simply, I think that wines carry mood also — and so the wine is acting like another musical instrument in the orchestra. If it’s playing in the wrong thematic mode, it clashes with the rest of the musicians.”

Smith asks skeptics, such as NPR’s Alex Cohen, to simply conduct a test with an open mind and palette. It took only a few songs for Cohen to be convinced that music can, indeed, alter wine’s taste. (A fellow journalist at the San Francisco Chronicle had a similar experience.)

Usually I just listen to whatever I want to listen to that day and don’t give much thought to “pairing” my wine and music.

Funny you should mention Mahler, I drank a '16 Carlisle Mancini Ranch last night and put in my tasting note “huge but compelling - like Mahler’s 8th”.

For Mahler 5, I think of Margaux for some reason, broad and structured, but with a haunting perfume that is beguiling and sometimes, infinitely sorrowful.

In some past thread, someone recommended the album Reconte-Moi by Stacey Kent as good wine drinking music, and I’ve come to like that.

One of my favorite albums of all time is Euphoria Morning by Chris Cornell. It’s a great mellow post-dinner album to relax with the rest of the bottle from dinner.

Far-out Coltrane is great to accompany wine from other artists looking to expand boundaries — no dosage farmer fizz etc.

The type of music you’re listening to will directly influence how the wine tastes. So will the chair you’re sitting on and the things in your visual periphery.

If you listen to the 2018-12-03 “How to Eat with your Ears” episode of Heston’s Pod and Chips podcast, he walks you through it. I’ve done it myself and with others and the sensory experience is noticeably different with different kinds of music (e.g., classical vs metal/hard rock). The whole series of his podcasts is something you can binge quite easily - it’s only 10 episodes, each half an hour long. I compiled a few of my favorite tricks from the series into a powerpoint for a wine club at work, if anyone wants to try them at home.

i always have music on…wine consumption plays no real role in what music i have on though an expansive, new age-y album from ECM records does work well. particularly some terje rypdal.

my first love has always been music since i was 10-12 years old. the same feeling of digging in the record bins when i was 14 or 16 is the same feeling i get when i scan through a list of bottles to purchase from some wine retailer.

a big moment for me was really getting into wine about 10 years ago. id go regularly to terroir in the east village and we’d play fugazi or primus while drinking some cote de nuits villages or saint joseph. that was an important moment in my wine discovery process.

My wife has been wanting to do this for a while. She’s a musician and has many musician friends who are also wine lovers. All different genres, so there’s not a snobbism other than the fact that the music has to be good.

But then non-musicians start suggesting music that isn’t very good. And that’s kind of like putting Meiomi into a tasting.

So it turns out that the best pairings usually involved sitting around the piano.

I wonder if grapes that have listened to music create wine that pairs especially well with the same music?

https://demorgenzon.com/music/

(I have been in the vineyards and heard the music.)

I’m pretty sure Krug pairs their wines with music when you taste on location in Champagne