Pairing it up: to select the right wine for your meal, venture beyond the 'red-with-meat, white-with-fish' routine.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: Wine food & travel

Serving a luscious prime rib Saturday night? If conventional wine wisdom guides you, you'll snag a favorite Cabernet Sauvignon from the store and cross "wine" off your list. If you're preparing baked salmon or raspberry-glazed chicken, on the other hand, wine lore says you're duty-bound to plant a Chardonnay on the table.

AS WITH MOST CLICHES, THE RED-WITH-MEAT, WHITE-WITH-FISH BROMIDE SPRINGS FROM AT LEAST ATHREAD OF TRUTH--BUT LITTLE MORE. True enough, a lush, oaky Chardonnay can nicely complement your tantalizing chicken recipe. And a bountiful Cab might indeed be perfect with your juicy, sizzling roast. (Right, and nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, and it's important to floss each evening.)

There's nothing particularly wrong with sticking to tradition, except that pairing wine and food with all the verve of sorting socks takes most of the fun away. Wine's supposed to be joy-of-life stuff, remember? So whether you're an able sommelier or a curious novice, figuring out what wines work with what food flavors can be fine sport.

EXPERT GUIDANCE

And as with any new sport, it helps to have some experts guide your way. You'll find a couple of them at Black Pearl, a neighborly central-Denver (1529 S. Pearl St.) restaurant with a comfortable, homey dining room and an inventive, zesty take on traditional American dishes. There, owners Steve Whited and Sean Huggard have dreamed up a range of pairings that defy conventions about wine.

For Whited, a certified wine sommelier who returned to his native Denver after running a restaurant in Nantucket, pairing is about finding a yin and yang between food and wine. The instinctive tendency of most of us is to try to identify wines that mimic food characteristics, rather than play off of them, Whited believes. His approach is the opposite: Enliven the palette with wines that offer an unexpected commentary on food flavors and character, rather than meekly reflecting them. "If you match the style of a food with a wine, you lose it," he cautions.

Example No. 1 comes early in our meal: 2006 Lois Gruner Veltliner to accompany two variations of oyster appetizers Huggard has concocted. The Austrian wine, straw-colored and slightly bubbly, is a light, effervescent affair that faintly dances in your mouth. It's tart like an apple. Whited loves it (and so does Gayle, my wine-tasting accomplice). The Lois is Whited's favorite "starting wine," a crispy, summery adornment to bold dishes like the half-shell oysters...