Last January, a flyer at my local farm advertising quarter cow shares caught my eye. It was a lot of meat and the upfront price tag was hefty, but the value was too good to pass up. Besides, I’d been wanting for a long time to experiment with beef-and-wine pairings beyond the classic steak-and-red, so I packed my trunk with a few heavy boxes and returned home with a wide range of cuts and a flurry of new recipe ideas.
     In the weeks that followed, I struck gold again and again in the kitchen. In one of my first experiments, I made beef and broccoli and paired it with Domaine de Reuilly’s Pinot Gris rosé. The Reuilly’s crisp citrus and faint salinity proved to be the perfect chaser for the soy-ginger glaze coating the broccoli and thin strips of flank steak.
     The next month, I made an easy miso and ginger chuck roast and paired it with Kuentz-Bas’s brisk and ultra-versatile Riesling—another great match. The following night, I warmed up the leftover shredded beef for tacos, combining it with some guacamole, coleslaw, and hot salsa. The tacos married festively with Patrick Bottex’s exuberant Bugey-Cerdon, whose residual sugar softened the salsa’s spice. I’m not sure there’s a better wine out there for taco or enchilada night.
     A few days ago, my colleague Anthony recommended I slice some of my tenderloin into featherweight pieces of carpaccio and top it with shaved parmesan, arugula, black pepper, and olive oil. Elisa Sesti had served this at her home in Montalcino and poured glasses of her exquisite Sangiovese rosato. “One of my favorite pairings ever,” he told me.
     Of course, a tried and true steak or burger can deliver pairing nirvana, too, and not just with reds. A more robust rosé, like Terrebrune’s Bandol, matches the tenderness of a filet mignon beautifully, and elegant sparklers like Champalou’s Vouvray Brut put the best final touch on a steak frites or cheese burger. And, at the most fundamental level, it’s hard to beat a seared or grilled steak paired with Lionel Faury’s Syrah or Benoît Cantin’s Pinot Noir from northern Burgundy.
     These last several months have served as an inspiring reminder that there’s more to beef than steak and burgers, and when you go even just one extra step in the creativity department in the kitchen, this opens you up to all kinds of revelatory wine pairings beyond the classics.