The Happy Pair – Wining and Dining at Mohonk Mountain House

It’s a Saturday in late May, and I have been invited to a wine-pairing dinner party at the Mohonk Mountain House. The weather – capricious all day – has finally softened, and as I drive onto the hotel’s historic grounds, I find everything bathed in the warm, golden light of evening.

I walk across a manicured lawn and up to the veranda of the hotel’s picnic lodge, where a sharply dressed Italian man hands me a Prosecco. A dozen or so guests are already gathered, helping themselves to appetizers that include crispy cubes of polenta, fresh oysters, skewers of salami and melon, and wedges of soft Italian cheeses, all served with focaccia.

This is the first of four wine-pairing evenings Mohonk Mountain House will host this summer, and tonight’s focus is Italy. The man pouring the libations is Marco Ballarin from Ethica Wines, a major importer of Italian wines and co-host of the evening. The wine he hands me is from the La Gioiosa vineyard in the Veneto region, the traditional home of Prosecco.

I drink it alongside Blue Point oysters harvested that very morning by Keenan Boyle, a startlingly tall oyster farmer from Long Island who is shucking and serving them from a stand on one corner of the lodge’s spacious terrace.

This is my first pairing of the evening: oysters and sparkling wine. It’s a flavor combination I first encountered many years ago when my parents dropped by my London apartment on the return leg of a trip to France, loaded up with fresh oysters from the Atlantic coast.

My parents took me to France nearly every summer throughout my childhood. We camped and, later on, stayed at the holiday home they bought in southwest France. They loved the French food culture, cooking mussels in white wine over camp stoves, and slathering baguettes with Camembert. I happily joined them on these culinary excursions, but for whatever reason, I drew the line at oysters. But that evening in London changed my mind for good. The shellfish’s unique texture, paired with the crisp effervescence of the wine, was a revelation.

The Science of Pairing

What is it about wine that pairs so well with food? It’s a question gastronomes have been endeavoring to answer for centuries.

Among them was the 20th-century French wine enthusiast Émile Peynaud, seen as one of the founders of enology, the scientific study of wine. Peynaud helped popularize the framework still used today to evaluate wines through aroma, structure, acidity, tannin, and balance, giving enthusiasts a vocabulary for understanding why certain wines complement particular dishes. But there might also be a simpler reason why wine and food are so naturally in sync-something more elemental and perhaps best captured by the writer Alexandre Dumas when he described wine as “the intellectual part of the meal.” Food satisfies the appetite; wine stimulates conversation. When the two work in harmony, the result is surely one of life’s great pleasures.

The Art of Conversation

I am delighted to see that they have chosen to seat us together at one large table. While I am neither a connoisseur of food nor of wine, I do love getting a bit tipsy and talking to people.

As we wait to be seated, my wife asks me to notice how tall she looks in her new wedges. But after standing in the lee of Keenan’s six feet seven inches these past minutes, it’s hard to be impressed. Keenan runs a boutique oyster farm located on Long Island’s Great South Bay, where Blue Point oysters originated in the early 19th century.

These days, despite a century-old New York law stipulating that only oysters grown in the bay could take the name, many oysters marketed as Blue Point originate elsewhere, Keenan tells me. His aptly-named business, Tall Mutha Shucka, aims to return the famous oyster – reportedly a favorite of Queen Victoria – to its place of origin.

My culinary education continues at dinner when we find ourselves in conversation with Walter Pogliani and Mike Fish,  the Catskill-based partners who run Pogliani Select, an import business for artisanal olive oils, balsamics, and other Italian culinary products.

The couple tells us about the cultural history of balsamic vinegar, which was originally used for medicinal purposes. The word balsamic derives from the Latin balsamum, referring to a healing balm or restorative substance.

Aided by the delightful food and drink, the atmosphere grows convivial, and a woman to my right suddenly flashes a photo of an asparagus she recently grew in her suburban backyard. “It took me three years to grow!” she declares with evident pride, and I wonder why she’s showing it to us until I realize the starter we are enjoying is asparagus and poached mussels paired with a Pinot Grigio.

Perfectly Paired

The first course is cleared away, and Marco rises to introduce the next pairing. Since there are two options for the main course – ribeye or roasted zucchini – two red wines have been proposed. Marco explains that at previous dinners, guests were served only the wine paired with their entrée, but they invariably wanted to taste the other one as well. “So tonight we give you both,” he says, stretching his arms wide in a gesture of generosity.

The waitstaff soon arrived with bottles of Toscana I Rosso, a Tuscan red made from the Sangiovese grape, to pair with the steak, and Barbera D’Alba from the Piedmont region, to pair with the zucchini.

I’ve chosen the steak and luxuriate in the combination of the tender meat washed down with the earthy red wine. The whole thing feels very Gilded Age, and I am imagining us all ending the meal and retiring to an adjacent room for cigars and cognac.

Instead, dessert arrives– a crisp, airy strawberry meringue served with basil gelato. The wine to pair it with is Veneto I Capitell, a sweet dessert wine made from the Garganega grape at the vineyard of Roberto Anselmi near Verona. The wine is extraordinary, the highlight of the evening, honeyed without being overly saccharine, clear and fresh.

Marco offers one final toast, thanking everyone for coming, and the party slowly begins to disperse. As I watch the diners get to their feet, I notice that it’s mainly couples. That’s another kind of pairing, I think.

I notice my wife, deep in conversation with Mike about the glories of the Mediterranean diet, and I suddenly feel a little guilty about my lack of attention earlier when she asked me to notice how good she looked.

It’s okay, I think. I see it now, and I will find my way to tell her when the time is right. Because a good relationship is not about cleaning up every spill, in the same way that a successful pairing is less about finding harmony than simply striking a balance.

I give Walter and Mike a ride to their car. We promise to meet in Europe during one of their annual foraging trips for new oils and balsamics. As I watch them drive away, I think about my parents again, and the nights I spent with them at their home in France, drinking cheap local wine and playing cards into the small hours.

On those lighthearted summer evenings, Peynaud’s system of analysis got short shrift. We paired wine with nearly anything – nuts, chips, cheese and crackers, candy bars, even – and it didn’t seem to matter – it all tasted great, and the conversation flowed.

Pairing good wines with fine foods is a delightful pastime, a privilege perhaps of our own gilded age, but in the end, it’s also only an addendum, a kind of decorative flourish. The deeper reason I enjoyed this evening at Mohonk, and still yearn for those long-gone nights in the Pyrenees, has nothing to do with the scientific complexities of flavor. It’s about something far more fundamental: the simple formula that makes life rich. The greatest pairing of all – time and good company.

The wine dinner featured here is part of an ongoing culinary and wine series at Mohonk Mountain House, where guests can experience thoughtfully curated evenings that bring together exceptional wines, seasonal menus, and expert storytelling.

Inspired by the wines featured in this story? The selections highlighted throughout the evening are available for purchase at Stone Ridge Spirits & Wine, making it easy to recreate a bit of the experience at home.

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Photos courtesy of Monhonk Mountain House + Paul Willis (Featured)
An INSIDE+OUT featured story by Paul Willis

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