Junk food, prepare to meet your match

How many times have you been crunching on your favorite chip, and stopped to think about which wine would pair well with said junk food?

Zero? Not shocking, but this is precisely the sort of thing Mike Pierce's overactive brain is working through most of the time.

Pierce, wine director and co-owner of Maverick, strives to make wine fun, approachable and a pleasure to drink at his Mission District restaurant, known for comforting renditions of fried chicken (beautiful with a Claudia Springs Pinot Gris from Anderson Valley, says Pierce), regional American cuisine and the One-of-a-Kind Wine Wednesday seminars he leads each month.

Pierce started as a beer drinker, and he was a beer snob, which led to his connoisseurship of wine. "You still learn what's good and what's bad, and that ultimately helps to create a more sophisticated palate and appreciate the craft."

While at the University of Vermont, Pierce landed at the Sirloin Saloon, an upscale steakhouse, where he discovered wine. "We tasted Coppola Claret, probably a '94, with a New York steak," says Pierce. "I thought, 'Oh yeah, I get it now.' Little did I know that '94 was a great vintage - I've gone back and tasted the wine since, and I still think it's not a bad wine."

Pierce moved to Prague in 1998, and traveled around Europe, really soaking up the sense of place that each bottle of wine provided. "Chianti in Florence, local wines in Barcelona - it was all just local and cheap - but enlightened me to the sense of place of the old vines," he says. "Looking back now ... I feel like I totally wasted that opportunity by drinking the cheapest wine."

From Prague to the Resort at Squaw Creek near Tahoe City and finally to San Francisco in 2001 to open Sociale, this is where Pierce earned his chops and hatched the plan to open Maverick with chef Scott Youkilis in 2005.

Q: It sounds like you got lucky learning from some of your past employers. How do you get your staff ready to speak about wines to customers?

A: Blind tastings are really important, because people are predisposed to thinking something about a wine because of the name. At first, people thought it would be about guessing the varietal ... it's not about that, I just want people to talk about wine in any way that they can. I also encourage them to do as much reading as possible - I keep a wine reading library at the restaurant. I trust them all to sell and represent the wines.

Sometimes you have to show them how, even if they don't like a certain wine. For example, a wine that goes well with the fried chicken, I may say, "You don't like it, but try it with the chicken where it has enough acidity to cut through the fat." Then they get it.

Q: Similar to your own aha moment. How did you get from pairing a classic steak with red wine to looking for the ultimate Cool Ranch Doritos pairing?

A. I'm addicted to Cool Ranch Doritos, and I was being interviewed for an article on comfort foods and wine pairings. I was crunching on Doritos - because I'm completely unprofessional - and the interviewer asked me what I was eating.

I told her I was working on finding a pairing for junk food. I teach a lot about why things work together, so it wasn't so far-fetched.

Q: So what does go well with Doritos? And how did you come to this conclusion?

A: They are hard. They have whey protein, chemicals, MSG - MSG can really throw wine through a loop.

A friend at Sutton Cellars makes a rosé called Rattlesnake Rosé that he leaves on the lees for eight months. It makes it rich and yeasty, but with great acidity. It goes well with Cool Ranch Doritos because it also has enough fruit to cut through the cayenne and pair with garlic and onions. The lees content matched perfectly.

Q: That seemed too easy. I'm going to throw a few at you. What about Krispy Kremes? Salt-and-vinegar potato chips?