It's funny how certain wine and food pairings seem to imply something about the quality of the wine.
If you see a review that suggests pairing a particular wine with hamburgers or pizza, you tend to think of it in a different way from one that's suggested for foie gras or lobster.
Apart from anything else, you'd expect a pizza wine to be less expensive, but it also seems to suggest something about the quality of the wine.
I guess this says something about the hierarchies, where more expensive ingredients are thought to call for more expensive wines.
I buy into this myself, and often suggest "gourmet" burgers or pizzas, rather than simply hamburger and pizza, when I suggest a pairing with a wine over about $12. That's because some hamburgers and pizzas (the "gourmet" kind) tend to have expensive or off-beat ingredients.
But I have to ask myself why it's necessary to match food and wine on any basis other than the way they interact. If the wine and food enhance each other, does it really matter if you pair a $200 bottle with a delicious $20 pizza delivered from your favourite pizzeria?
Barbecues are just like that, too. When you fire up the grill in your backyard or at the cottage, you might be cooking fairly mundane hamburgers or hot dogs, you might be grilling vegetables, fish, meat, or you might be grilling more expensive cuts or meats (like kangaroo).
But grilling is just another way of cooking, after all, and there's no reason why you shouldn't open an excellent (and perhaps expensive) bottle with your barbecued meal eaten on the deck or at the cottage.
As always, the critical thing is to match the food and the wine so that both show to best effect. The wine-food pairing exercise has been elevated to a science by some wine and food writers, but there are a couple of basic principles to follow.
First, the weight of the wine and the food ought to be similar. Light food, like most salads and much white fish, pairs best with lighter wines, be they white, rosé or red.
Heavier dishes, like those with red meat, generally go better with fuller-bodied wines.
Second, pair the wine with the dominant flavour of the meal. Often, that's not the meat but the sauce or condiment. Think of barbecued chicken, curried chicken, roast chicken, southern fried chicken, and chicken Kiev. They're all chicken, but they taste quite different, so it's not much help to say that a particular wine goes well with "chicken." The dominant flavour comes not from the chicken but what's added to it.
As a general rule, spicy dishes (including tangy barbecue sauces) are best paired with fruity, not too-tannic wines like Gamay (or Beaujolais), off-dry Riesling, many Shirazes, Zinfandels. Sweet dishes (which can include meat, fish and vegetables with sweet barbecue sauces) go best with wines with some fruitiness.
For acidic sauces (with some tartness), go for higher-acid wines, like Riesling and Sauvignon.
But don't worry too much about the price of the wine. In the end, wine matches best with company and occasions, and if you get the wine and food match more or less right, everything will be fine.
Four reds today, all doing well with barbecued pork.