Out of all the 1980s Action TV Shows I’ve paired with wine, MacGyver has probably provided us with the most social / pop cultural references and idioms.
Everyone knows this show. It’s freakin' MacGyver! He’s the genius special agent who doesn’t like guns, but knows enough about chemistry, physics, technology, engineering (et cetera) that he can fix almost anything with almost anything else.
Angus “Mac” MacGyver, special agent for the Phoenix Foundation, former special agent for the U.S. Department of External Services (neither of these things exist or ever have), can start a car with the spring from a ball-point pen. He can fix a truck’s radiator with a chicken egg. Booby-trap a shed with a net, some ball bearings, a spinning whetstone, and a bit of gunpowder.
The dude made it cool to do stuff with duct tape and Swiss Army knives. He’s among the most legendary TV geeks ever.
Can you tell I liked MacGyver?
Alright, there it was.
So… what to pair, what to pair?
At the 2010 Wine Bloggers Conference, Chef Jeffrey Saad held a seminar on pairing food and wine. He mentioned there that Barbera, a delicious, medium-bodied, acidic Italian red wine, pairs with almost anything. It fits numerous situations, and is a Swiss Army knife of food and wine pairing, as it were.
And there you go. MacGyver, the show about the guy who could make anything out of any other thing, pairs well with Barbera, the wine that pairs with basically any food.
Some Barbera wines I can recommend:
- 2006 Tamas Estates Prima Red (92)
- 2007 Prunotto Barbera d'Asti Fiulot (88)
- 2008 Tamas Estates Barbera Port (88)