Of recipes and fortified wines

Today I'm making roasted guinea hen with bay leaves, Madeira, & dates. The recipe is from Judy Roger's exceptional book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook. I really love this cookbook; it's detailed, well-written, and deeply insightful - not to mention, full of great recipes. Her roast chicken recipe trumps all others, in my view.

However, I have a quibble and a more general criticism:

(1) Gerald Asher's wine pairing recommendations are way too specific. For example, he recommends Qupé Central Coast Syrah 1999 for this guinea hen recipe. Asher justifies this specificity as an expression of real wines from real people and places. OK, but including the vintage?!

(2) The guinea hen recipe calls for 1/2 cup Madeira. What kind of Madeira? Rainwater? Sercial? Bual? Malmsey? These are vastly different types of wines, from the relatively light and dry (for Madeira) Rainwater style to the thick, rich, sweet, Port-like Malmsey. They would give vastly different results in the recipe.

The latter is, of course, a general gripe about recipe writers. I've lost count of the number of times customers have come into the wine shop asking for a fortified wine for a recipe (Sherry, Port, Madeira, or Marsala), without any guidance in the recipe about what style of the specified wine category to use. Each of these is a wine region that makes a variety of very different styles of fortified wines, from dry to sweet, lighter to richer, fresher to more aged.

We often can figure out a reasonable recommendation from the style and other ingredients of the recipe, but it isn't always obvious. These generic suggestions also reflect either sloppiness or ignorance on the part of the recipe writer. Would anyone get away with publishing a recipe that says "sauté 1 lb. of meat and add 1 tsp. of some herb that grows in Provence"?!

So here's my plea to recipe writers: When you specify a fortified wine as a recipe ingredient, indicate what kind (or kinds, if there's more than one option):

Sherry: Fino? Amontillado? Oloroso? Cream? PX?
Port: Ruby? Tawny? LBV? Vintage?
Madeira: Rainwater? Sercial? Bual? Malmsey?
Marsala: Dry? Sweet?

By the way, I'm using dry Marsala instead of Madeira with this recipe, simply because I have a bottle of Marsala open. If I were going to use Madeira, I'd probably choose Rainwater.