Pinot CountryAt the table (10)

The pairing pinot noir gets asked about most: dark meat, a thick fat cap, and enough savoury weight to meet a wine with little tannin.

Époisses, Soumaintrain, Langres — Burgundy's own cheeses, washed in brine and marc until they smell like a farmyard and taste milder than they smell.

Coast live oak, Quercus agrifolia, Encina

The wood the whole style rests on. In Santa Maria, red oak means coast live oak — Quercus agrifolia — which grows on the hills around the valley and burns down to hot, steady coals without throwing much smoke.

Chopped raw tomato, celery, green chilli, onion and a shot of vinegar or Worcestershire — thinner and sharper than a Mexican pico de gallo, and spooned over sliced beef rather than eaten with chips.

A fish oily enough to take a red wine, and in Oregon the pairing is local logic rather than theory — the fish and the pinot come from the same watershed.

The flavour bridge: older pinot noir picks up a forest-floor smell, and a plate of fungi meets it head on. Glutamates in the mushroom read as savoury, which is the same register a mature bottle moves into.

Burgundy has its own black truffle, and the smell does to a glass of old pinot what nothing else does. Shaved late, over something plain, and never cooked hard.

A tough old bird braised in red wine, lardons, mushrooms and onions, thickened with its own blood in the oldest versions. Burgundy cooks it in Burgundy and drinks the same wine with it.

Tri-tip, Santa Maria steak, Triangle tip

A triangular two-to-five-pound piece of bottom sirloin, rolled in salt, pepper and garlic, grilled over red oak coals to medium-rare and sliced across the grain.

Pinquitos

A small pink bean grown in the Santa Maria Valley and almost nowhere else, cooked with bacon or ham, garlic, chilli and a little tomato, and served in a bowl beside the beef.