Garlic, flavouring profile

Garlic, flavouring profile

Raw garlic and slow cooked garlic are almost two different foods, and the wine should follow both the way it is cooked and what it is cooked with.

The compounds that matter. Allicin forms the moment raw garlic is crushed, and it gives the hot, sharp bite that makes alcohol burn more and leaves a delicate wine thin. It breaks down into sulphur compounds that linger on the breath and the palate, and a wine that already smells of struck match tends to make them taste heavier. Slow roasting or long cooking turns the same cloves soft, sweet and nutty, and then they want a rounder wine rather than a sharp one.

What it demands of a wine. With raw or lightly cooked garlic, high acid and a clean, herbal or saline edge to cut through the pungency, with modest alcohol and no oak. With roasted or slow cooked garlic, more body and ripe fruit, since the sweetness makes a lean wine taste sour. With garlic in butter or oil, acid first, to clear the fat.

Seek

With garlic prawns, mussels, squid or white fish, reach for a sharp, saline white such as Picpoul de Pinet from the Languedoc or Vermentino from Sardinia, whose herbal edge suits parsley and lemon. With snails, garlic bread or anything in garlic butter, Aligoté from Burgundy has the acid to cut the butter, the pairing Burgundy itself serves with its snails. With chicken and pork, especially where the garlic is roasted whole, Fiano from Campania has the weight and a hazelnut note that meets the sweet, nutty cloves. With lamb and beef cooked with garlic and rosemary, a Côtes du Rhône brings red fruit and garrigue herbs, and for a slow cooked shoulder of lamb, Bandol, the Mourvèdre of Provence, adds more depth and savoury weight.

Avoid

Tannic, high alcohol reds with raw garlic, since the bite makes both taste harsher. Delicate, aromatic whites such as Viognier or Gewürztraminer, whose perfume clashes with the sulphur. Heavily oaked whites with garlic and seafood, where oak turns metallic against the fish. Old, fragile bottles of any colour, whose detail a strong dose of garlic will hide.

Three to reach for. For fish, shellfish and anything with raw garlic, Picpoul de Pinet, Languedoc, France. For chicken, pork and roasted garlic, Fiano, Campania, Italy. For lamb and beef, Côtes du Rhône, France.