Wine & food

Catalan cuisine and Roussillon wine grew up over the same fire — literally. Cargolade is the name of the feast where small gray vineyard snails are grilled over a fire of dry vine-wood cuttings until they sizzle. Someone then drags a piece of burning bacon across them, and everyone eats them with country bread, aioli, and a glass of robust red wine from the local area. The vine wood gives the snails a smoky note. Charcoal simply can't do that.

No delicate wine belongs at this feast. A young Côtes du Roussillon with plenty of Grenache and a touch of Syrah, robust and warm, stands up effortlessly to the garlic and smoke; a lighter wine would simply vanish next to the aioli.

On the coast, in Collioure itself, everything revolves around a single ingredient: anchovies. They're cured in salt, aged, and traditionally served on buttered toast or baked into a pissaladière. The dry Collioure blanc pairs well here, salty and mineral-driven with noticeable acidity. It cuts through the fish's fattiness instead of being overwhelmed by it.

By the end of the meal, the rule reverses. A piece of dark chocolate or a cocoa tart no longer calls for a dry wine, but a sweet one: Banyuls. A mature Rancio with notes of coffee and nut works best, almost mirroring the chocolate rather than being drowned out by it. Anyone who instead pours a dry red wine with chocolate will taste nothing afterward but bitterness and acidity. The sugar in the dessert devours any dry wine that doesn't bring some sweetness of its own to the table.