Gout Festival 2007

You probably missed word of this event in the blogosphere or the local newspaper. Actually, this is a very localized event, one that started recently among family and friends in our neck of the woods. If you are susceptible to gout or know someone who is, then you probably know lots of shellfish and lots of wine can be a formula for bringing on a gout attack.

But, as many of us know, there are risks in life well worth taking and indulging copiously in lobster and wine is one of them. After all, even Robert Parker suffers from gout, but you don't see him giving up wine and good eating, do you?

A clever niece of mine came up with the name for the festival, which included lots of lobster in drawn butter, baked stuffed shrimp and mixed seafood salad (preceded for some of us by oysters on the half-shell). Festival goers were supplied with T-shirts, in a color scheme well suited to hiding flying lobster juice. It was an awfully satisfying event.

So, it seemed like a good time to build on last year's research as to what white wines go best with lobster. So, I again trotted out a white Burgundy, which I thought paired just as well as ever with the lobster. The flavors work pretty well with lobster in butter, but the magic is in the textural match. Good white Burgundy has a creaminess that goes so well with anything in a butter sauce.

We also had some Champagne with the lobster, some Veuve Cliquot to be exact. This also was a very tasty match -- of course, good Champagne goes well with almost anything. Recently, I also tried a Chateau Routas Coquelicot (a chardonnay/viognier blend from the south of France) that was quite nice with lobster. This wine brings together the body of the chard and the floral notes of the viognier, making it so much fun with lobster.

But the wine I recently tried with lobster that really shone was an Alsatian pinot gris, the Domaine Zind Humbrecht Heimbourg 1999. Just lovely with lobster. This wine has the richness you need with lobster in butter. And, the natural sweetness of the lobster meat was heavenly with the slightly honeyed citrus quality of the Heimbourg.

I don't know if the Heimbourg is the perfect lobster wine. Probably not, since that would mean an end to this most enjoyable little research project. We can't have that, just yet.