What’s On The Table

Jeff Benson came around to wine late in life.

Before that he says, “I guess I was a beer guy.”

Years ago, his brother was a personal chef to the owner of a Napa Valley, Calif., winery. It was on trips to that winery where Benson started develop a taste for the vino and began to experiment with the art of pairing food and wine.

Later he would further that experience managing and pairing for the now defunct Front Street eatery Benson’s Restaurant and then onto owning his own shop, dealing with and researching all aspects of the wine industry.

WU: So how do you get into the wine business?

Benson: “I was kind of thrown into it. When we closed down the restaurant, I opened up this shop, because I’d always really enjoyed this end of the job… I didn’t care so much for other parts, but I really enjoyed this part.”

WU: What are some of the basic principles of pairing food and wine for the layman?

Benson: “Well you know there’s your classic matches… let’s say you’re grilling up a slab of ribs, you’re gonna want a nice zinfandel or shiraz. You know, there’s the classic cabernet with steak and your dryer white wines with fish … There’s your classic matches and your not so classic matches.”

WU: What’s the most bizarre pairing you’ve come across?

Benson: “Hmm…I’d have to think about that one.”

Zinfandels and shiraz are spicey and peppery, Benson notes, which goes well with the tomato paste in the sauces that go on ribs. Cabernets go well with steaks because the steak fat cuts through the bitter pucker of the red wine.

“You need fat to cut through the tannins in a wine,” he adds.

Tannins are the healthy elements in wine, packed with polyphenols and other organic compounds, which also create the bitter astringent pucker characteristic in red wines. That bitterness is matched well with fatty foods.

Benson: “For richer fish, you’re gonna want a big buttery chardonay, that’s always a good one. You can even drink a pinot noir with a pinker fish, like salmon,” Benson said. “Salmon and pinot there’s another classic, about the best thing in the world.”

WU: And wine, of course in moderation, wine is actually healthy, right?

Benson: “Oh yeah, there’s tons of polyphenols and anti-cancer agents… . They’ve pretty much said that it is good for you. The tannins are the good part.

“I tell my doctor I try to drink every day, which always gets a strange look.”

WU: So can you pair wine with each meal of the day?

Benson: “Well… sure, champagne with breakfast, I guess you could have three glasses a day.”

WU: How does geography work into the equation? If you’re eating Italian food, do you match that with Italian wine, French wine with French food and so forth?

Benson: “The rule is: drink wine from the region of the food you’re eating… at least that’s the basic tenet.

“Washington is pretty unusual in that pretty much anything grows here ­— in Eastern Washington, once you get over the mountains — because it’s hot and it’s sunny and that’s what grapes like… They’re finding out that so many different kinds of grapes, all this different grenache that are indigenous to places all over the world… can grow here.”

In that sense, Benson said he thinks Washington state is still in its infancy in terms of becoming a major player in the wine world. While a bevy of great wines are already coming out from Eastern Washington wineries, Benson notes he’s poised for a surge in the coming years.

WU: How does Washington compare to the rest of the world on the consumption end of the bottle?

Benson: “People think if you’re a wine seller all you do is sit around and get drunk all day, but it’s like the whole European thing… when they’re just kids they drink watered down wine with dinner, and they learn that its like food, it’s something that you have with a meal. In this country, everyone thinks that it’s something to get drunk off of.”

Which is actually, ironically, how Benson was first introduced to wine, taking gallons of Red Mountain and Spinetta and getting smashed at the beach.

“Sadly, it ruined my taste for red wine for many, many years, I couldn’t even smell it,” Benson said. “But I got over it.”

Now, he runs the last remaining wine shop on the Kitsap Peninsula between Port Townsend and Port Orchard (excluding Bainbridge), following the closing of Grape Expectations shop in Silverdale and the Manette Wine Shop in Bremerton earlier this year.

Benson: “Ah, the most bizarre pairing I’ve come across, I’ve been thinking about it this whole time, it was a big sparkling red Australian wine with a big juicy burger. Sparkling red wine is a bit bizarre itself, but a sparkling wine with a burger… that’s quite bizarre.”

Olympic Wine Shop is located in Poulsbo Village behind the Taprock Northwest Grill.

WHAT’S ON THE TABLE is the first in a new monthly series of interviews and columns from community specialist along with rants and raves from throughout Kitsap’s gastronomic universe. It’s slated for Fourth Friday Food & Drink. Also check out: First Friday Books & Film featuring the Screening Room and the West Sound Booksellers, Second Friday Outdoors & Adventure both Beyond and In Kitsap and Third Friday Home & Garden with Master Gardner Peg Tillery’s Dig This.