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    You’d be hard-pressed to find any item of food or drink that has more variety than wine. Just look at the number of different labels found on a large retailer’s shelf, and then think of all those wines that never get to those shelves, that are sold only in their own countries, regions or even only at their own wineries.  I recently read that there are over 10,000 different grape varieties grown on every continent, except Antarctica!

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    Like artists with extensive color palettes, talented globally inspired chefs continue to combine ancient and modern ingredients in highly original ways to delight sophisticated food lovers.

    No matter what food is served or where the ingredients or recipes originate, the right wine pairing can reveal added dimensions of flavors.  A particularly fun food and wine challenge is to find and pair wines with an eclectic menu that covers many countries’ cuisines.   

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    There are more than 17 million Americans who claim Italian descent in the United States. Italian cuisine ranks near the top among the over 640,000 restaurants operating in the U.S. Italian dishes have an amazingly broad appeal well beyond the aforementioned Italian-Americans. If the above aren’t enough, another reason that Italian cuisine is so ubiquitous in America is that it pairs so well with wines from all over the world.

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    The unique French toast offerings that are the hallmark of breakfasts at the historic Inns at St. Albans pose a very interesting challenge to wine-lovers. Most of the time, the simple egg-dipped bread fried in butter is the bastion of breakfast or brunch, meals where the drink of choice is more often a cocktail like a bloody mary or mimosa, or maybe a café au lait.

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    Back in the day, there was little crossover between restaurant cuisines. Italian restaurants served only Italian food and wine; French restaurants only the food and drink of that country, and so on. Any mixing of the cuisines was deemed suspicious, and the general consensus among gourmands was that chefs could not excel at dishes from more than one country.

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    Wine may not spring to mind when the menu features such dishes as fried green tomatoes, flaky Southern biscuits and a mouth-watering version of Southern fried chicken, with mashed potatoes, pan gravy and collard greens. Still, the many flavors in each dish, not to mention the acidic, savory, salty and buttery notes that one tastes with each bite, are actually quite compatible with a number of wines from around the world.

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