Enjoying wine with your meal can be a very pleasurable experience, especially if you pay some attention as to which wine complements the food that you will be eating with it. The basic idea of pairing wine with food is to try to find a wine and food combination that tastes better together than they do on their own. In other words, find taste combinations that match well in your mouth when consumed together.
Although many may make suggestions, everyone’s taste palate is different and wine and food pairings are often dictated by personal choice. You should not worry too much about what others tell you about the wine and food matches, but should leave it up to your own palate to decide for yourself.
There are, however, a few simple guidelines to follow when serving wine with a meal. When you plan a meal, you generally start with the more delicate tastes, like a salad, and work your way through the meal towards the heavier tastes, like the meat course, and end with a sweet dessert. In the same manner, you want to drink light to darker, heavier wines to go with the course you are eating.
Typically a light white wine is usually a match for salads or the lighter beginning dishes of a meal. You would then move on to the heavier wines, like serving a red wine with a beef dish or one with a heavier meat sauce. The dessert part of the meal would typically match with a sweeter, heavier wine choice such as a port served with a piece of chocolate cake.
You also need to consider a balance when serving wine with your food. You do not want the flavors of your food to overshadow the taste of the wine, so you need to consider both the flavor and texture of your food when choosing a wine to go with it. For example, a lobster dish may have a rich buttery sweet flavor that may be delicate enough to be complemented by a white wine, but because of the rich texture, the white wine served should also be rich and full-bodied, such as an oak-aged Chardonnay.
When choosing a wine for a dish that has mixed ingredients and you are not sure what will match with it, try to determine what the most dominant flavor in the dish is and match your wine to that flavor. It could be the sauce or seasonings that determine the match. For instance, in a chicken dish with a spicy sauce, although chicken typically is served with a white wine, in this case a medium-bodied red may go better with the dominant sauce flavor.
You can also create matches for food and wine by mirroring the characteristics of the food. An example of this would be to pair a full-bodied jammy red Zinfandel with a rich meat in a thick gravy. As a tip, include some of the wine you will be serving with the dish as on of the cooking ingredients.
Another way to go is by contrasting the food and wine that you are serving together. This can often be a delicious choice. For example, you may wish to serve a sweet Port with a cheese tray. The sweet richness of the Port contrasts perfectly with the strong salty cheese to make a great taste combination.
Another hint in pairing food and wine is to think of regional items that go together. For instance, an Italian Chianti is a great match for a spaghetti dish with a rich tomato and meat sauce.
At the same time, think about the key components in the wine you choose to serve with a dish. The amount of acidity in the food can cause a wine with little acidity to taste bland. For instance, tomatoes in a dish need a wine with enough acid content to balance it out. Or, if you are serving a dish that has a sweetness to it, like a dessert, the sweet element needs to be balanced out in the wine you serve. As a rule, when serving desserts, the wine consumed with it should be at least as sweet as the dessert.
You also need to consider the tannin found in the wine (a component that comes from the skins, seeds and stems of the grapes) and the alcohol content in the wine. The tannin, mostly found in red wines, generally leave an astringent feeling in your mouth. You should match the tannin content of the wine with the protein of the meat you are serving. For example, the protein from a juicy steak would coat your mouth and make the tannins in the wine seem softer and smoother.
The amount of alcohol in the wine will intensify the spiciness found in the dish you are serving. So, unless you want a lot of heat to be the main component of your food, try to avoid serving high-alcohol content wines with spicy dishes. As an alternate, a dry wine with just a bit of sweetness would work well.
As mentioned, the above are just general rules about how to pair food and wines. Only you can decide for yourself what works best with your flavor palate. Remember that anything goes as long as it tastes great to you.
