Damned Straight! Beers Deserves The Same Status As Wine

Sometimes, the best fermented for a particular meal is a beer, or better yet in my view, an ale.

"To me," said Mr. Oliver, the brewmaster of Brooklyn Brewery, "beer and wine are both beverages meant to be served with food. And good beer, real beer, often offers things that most wine does not, like carbonation and caramelized and roasted flavors — aspects that sometimes make beer the preferable choice.

"And the most wonderful thing about beer is that it has that ability to `reset' your palate. Take cassoulet, for example: Rustic southern French reds are good, but French beer is a much better choice. Cassoulet can be like cement, but beer busts it up and makes it seem so much lighter."

Though wine snobs might disagree with him, I understood Mr. Oliver's points when we spoke on the phone. It's certainly true that on those occasions I had consumed enough wine to cut through a cassoulet, I had fallen under the table. And I knew that Mr. Oliver, who is also author of the comprehensive "Brewmaster's Table" (Ecco, $29.95), had done wildly successful beer-and-food pairings around the world.

In truth, more work, more science and more experitise goes into the brewing of a fine ale than a good wine. Enologists are still much too satisfied with letting natural conditions dictate the quality of the wine they make.