What Wine Where: Alforon Lebanese
A Taste of Everything: The Mezze Feast
Lebanese cuisine is considered part of the ancient cultural heritage of the Levantine region, a large area of the Eastern Mediterranean that historically includes Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel, Palestine, and most of Turkey. Located at the crossroads of western Asia, the eastern Mediterranean, northeast Africa, and the northwest of the Arabian plate, Lebanese cuisine is a rich patchwork that is all about variety.
This variety is best shown in the traditional “mezze” meal, a multitude of small plates meant for sharing and lingering over with friends, rich with the flavors of fresh herbs, olive oil, garlic, and lemon. Traditionally paired with Arak, an anise-flavored spirit made from distilled grapes, a mezze-style meal is a perfect chance to take your time trying out a variety of dishes while relaxing with loved ones. In our case, we substituted a variety of Splash wines for the classic Arak to see if we could find some surprising new combinations for our Lebanese feast.
This week, our selection of dishes comes from Alforon Lebanese, a partner restaurant being featured from September 12–21 in the International Rescue Committee’s “A Taste of IRC.”
What Did We Order?
- Kibbie Labaniyyeh: Kibbie is the national dish of Lebanon. Kibbie is made with lean ground beef mixed with cracked wheat, herbs, spices, and stuffed with pine nuts and diced onion. The Labaniyyeh version is served with a garlic yogurt sauce and Basmati rice.
- Chicken Kabab: Roasted chicken skewers served with garlic paste (toum), yogurt, cucumbers, with grilled tomato and onion, and served with rice.
- Meat Sambousek: Sambousek, also called samboosak in some Middle Eastern regions, is a fried stuffed pastry. This one was filled with ground meat and spices.
- Alforon Grape Leaves: Grape leaves stuffed with rice, lemon juice, and spices, similar to Greek dolmas.
- Baba Ghannouj: Oven-roasted eggplant, tahini, garlic, and lemon juice, served with flatbread.
- Falafel Bajeen: A flatbread “pizza” topped with baked falafel (fava and garbanzo beans seasoned with spices and herbs), topped with diced tomatoes, tahini, and pickled beets.
- Aaysh Essaraya: A creamy, custard-like dessert made with floral syrup and topped with chopped pistachios.
All of these dishes are mild when it comes to capsicum-heat, but very well seasoned. Mint, parsley, oregano, garlic, allspice, nutmeg, and cinnamon are common seasonings in Lebanese food, along with tangy, lemony sumac powder. Spicy-sweet cardamom, black pepper, cloves, ginger, paprika, and fenugreek are also found in many Lebanese spice mixes.
Now, The Wine
We picked a selection of wines we thought would mix well with the vast array of herbs and spices found in Lebanese food and possessed enough body to complement earthy tahini, grilled meat, and fried falafel. Arak, the traditional accompaniment to a Lebanese meal, has a slightly sweet, anise seed flavor, high alcohol content, and rich earthiness that serves to refresh the palate after a bite of garlicky or heavily acidic food. We tried to capture a few of these key factors in the wines we tried, plus a couple of experimental comparisons.
- Rabasco Abruzzo Bianco 2019: This organic, natural Italian white wine opens with a burst of salinity and the scent of hard apple cider. It has an earthy “funkiness” that dissipates as it breathes. After a few minutes, you’ll be rewarded with a fresh, clean, but full-bodied white wine with a hint of green apple and honey. This wine is strong and rustic enough to pair well with the hearty garlic and pickled beet flavors in the Falafel Bajeen. If you want to try one intense flavor piled on top of the other, try this wine with the Baba Ghannouj, where the earth and smoke flavors in both parts are intensified.
- Middle-Earth Chardonnay 2016: The Middle-Earth Chardonnay has flavors of popcorn, lime peel, white stone fruit, peach cobbler, and vanilla cream. We liked this wine the most with the Chicken Kabab. The buttery rice, along with the light garlic, turmeric, lemon, and sumac flavor of the chicken, complements both the rich and bright flavors in this Chardonnay. As a fun bonus, top the kabab with Baba Ghannouj spread for a luscious added dimension to this pairing.
- Wilson Foreigner Valdiguie 2018: Savory, bright fruit flavors, mouthwatering acidity, and light tannins help this wine shine with almost any cuisine, but it was our favorite pairing of the night when put together with the Kibbie Labaniyyeh. The rich pine nuts and sweet spices baked into the kibbe mixture brought out the fruity, cherry flavor of the wine, and elevated both the wine and the dish. The sweet spice blend, creamy yogurt sauce, and hearty kibbe meat called out for a wine with a little more warmth and body, but with a light tartness to liven up the richness of the dish, and this wine delivered on all counts.
- Innato Noemí Wines Bobal Red Blend 2015: The Innato Noemí is a medium-bodied red wine made of a blend of Bobal and Cabernet Franc. The medium-high tannins in the wine balance out the sweetness of the Meat Sambousek dough and the savory spices in the meat enhance the dark-fruit flavors of the wine.
- Cavas Masachs Estate Mas Fi Brut: This bubbly, tart Spanish Cava works well with the strong lemon flavor of the Alforon Grape Leaves. The stuffed grape leaves ended up being the most challenging food to find a great pairing for due to its heavily acidic nature. In this case, we needed an equally lively, dry wine to match the level of acidity in the food. Counter-intuitively, acidic foods often need an equally acidic wine to balance them out and let the more delicate flavors of the food appear, and to keep the chosen wine from tasting bland or lifeless in comparison. This Cava ended up being the only wine we chose that had enough power to hold up against the lemony grape leaves!
- Commanderie de la Bargemone Provence Rosé 2019: This dry, fruity rosé echoes the rosewater, lavender, orange blossom, citrus rind flavors found in the syrup of the Aaysh Essaraya dessert. This is a rich, creamy dessert that needs a light, lean wine pairing in order not to become overpoweringly sweet and soft.
So, What Wine, Where?
With so many dishes to try and flavors involved, a Lebanese spread like this one is a perfect opportunity to try a variety of wines and discover some new favorites. While Arak may be the right accompaniment if you want just one bottle of something to support the meal as a whole, it was a fun experience to see each wine enhancing a dish in a new, special way.
We were most surprised by the evolution of the Rabasco Abruzzo Bianco as it opened up in the glass and married with the food flavors. This wine may taste a bit unusual all on its own, but when we gave it time to fully express itself and pair up with the right dish, it really began to shine.
The Wilson Foreigner Valdiguie and Kibbie Labaniyyeh was a match made in heaven and by far the most crowd-pleasing. The tart red fruit evident in the Valdiguie reminded us of a cherry-studded Persian pilaf when paired up with the spices present in the kibbe. Something about the light, brightness of this wine plus the fragrant spices in the kibbe felt so festive and special we were talking about it days later.
We suggest you order one of every dish that catches your attention and plan to feel incredibly satisfied by the end of your Lebanese feast (and even have enough leftovers for a second feast tomorrow.)
