Are You Sure This Is Fun
It is, if you want it to be. If you are hosting friends for dinner, you want them to enjoy your cooking and appreciate the wines without necessarily seeing the effort and thought behind them.
What if you unwittingly serve a wine that makes your veal dish taste like a heel cushion, or your sole meunière makes the wine taste like skid-row jug juice? As weve said, no meal has been completely ruined by an improper pairing, but time, consideration and experimentation will improve your odds of getting it right.
Of Course Its Not Always That Simple
A Chardonnay from Chablis and a Chardonnay from Napa Valley share some core flavors and characteristics, but most of the stylistic elements will vary widely. This holds true for Pinot Grigio, Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Syrah and other wine grapes that are vinified worldwide.
The respective climates, soils and winery treatments will affect the finished style of the wines. And that affects their ability to pair with a specific dish.
For say, grilled fish served with a light drizzle of olive oil, a light white wine, like a cool-climate Pinot Grigio or a lean and steely Chablis, would be a good match.
But again, not all Pinot Grigios or Chardonnays are created equal. A full-bodied, intensely flavored, oaky wine might render the fish tasteless. What if the fish is not grilled simply and lightly oiled? What if its smothered in a rich, flavorful cream sauce?
In that case, the very light Pinot Grigio will be overwhelmed by the food. A fuller white wine or a leaner red, like Pinot Noir, might be a better choice.
What if a squeeze of lemon is needed to bring this fish to life, or perhaps the fish is a component in an acidic ceviche? Then the acidity of the wine becomes a factor. Either choose a low-acid wine to contrast the acidity of the dish, or pick a crisply acidic wine to complement it.
You can see how this can get insane very quickly. So generalizations like white wine with fish are useful, but only to a point.
The Basics: Wine And Food Pairing Guide
Topics:Wine Knowledge
The world of wine can be intimidating. From full bodied red wines to crisp dry white wines. The options are truly endless! However, when it comes to pairing wine with food there are quite a few tips and tricks to help you along the way. This guide is your one stop shop on how to pair food and wine.
The first step in gaining an in-depth knowledge into wine and food pairings, is an understanding of some of the most commonly used wine terms. These terms are used to describe all different aspects of wine. For a more extensive list of terms, check out our blog How to Taste Wine.
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Flavour Matching Salty Food
Lets say youre serving up a charcuterie board with lots of creamy feta or manchego, prosciutto and anchovies all of these elements have a very salty element to them. Salt is a harmonising food component because it tends to emphasise richness, body and pure fruit flavours in your wine and mellows out any harsh tannins. This means you could go two ways with your wine match.
Choose a boldly tannic wine such as Barolo, Chianti or cabernet sauvignon-based wines which will be balanced by the harmonising saltiness of your food, or
Go for a fruity acidic wine such as a riesling or sauvignon blanc as the salt will add to the sensation of body and fullness in the wine while the zinginess of the wine will complement the saltiness of the food. Think saline-tinged oysters paired with steely Chablis.
What If Im Looking For A Wine To Pair With A Pasta Dish Or A Stew Or A Dish With Many Assertive Flavors
You need to consider the overall impression of the dish on the palate. Lamb, chicken, beef, fish or vegetables will likely take on the character of the seasoning, or at least take a back seat to the overall texture.
What is the dominant element? If its a stew, is it tomato-based and acidic? Try a fresh, aromatic white like Sauvignon Blanc, or a light, easygoing red like Lambrusco. Is it more earthbound, featuring mushrooms, garlic and onions, as in many sautéed dishes? Try a medium-bodied, fruit-forward red like Pinot Noir. If its pasta, is it a creamy sauce, or a leaner, oil-based sauce?
Some refined dishes and cuisines, like Thai, call for citrus flavorings. Much vegetarian cuisine is herbal in nature. Each will point you to a certain style of wine.
One useful shortcut: Many dishes are regional in origin, and you should definitely consider that regions wines. A Tuscan pasta? Choose a Tuscan wine.
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Its All About Balance
If you dont remember anything else about matching food and wine, remember this: balance is key.
Think of wine as a sauce. You probably wouldnt drizzle an unctuous meat gravy over a fillet of lemon sole, because the boldness of the sauce would overpower the delicacy of the fish. Similarly, a delicate herb-flecked white wine sauce would be lost on a charred hunk of steak because the richness of the fat and seared meat would overpower the delicate flavours. Try matching full-bodied wines, with relatively high alcohol to full-flavoured dishes lighter, less alcoholic styles, suit more subtle flavours.
Food And Wine Pairing Menu
For thousands of years, wine was a staple at meal times. Nobody put much thought into pairing beyond âWine is good. So is food. They are nice together.â It wasnât until recently, say the last 50 or 60 years, that the modern âartâ of food and wine pairing became a thing. It even started to influence folks who were buying a winery, to think about the experience for their guests.
More than just a thing, in fact. The ability to successfully pair food and wine was the mark of a true wine lover. For it can only be one so full of arcane oenological knowledge, so thoroughly perceptive in the ways of wine, that can pair food and wine correctly. So the very righteous thinking went, anyway.
Then it thankfully dawned on the wine-drinking world that not everyone has the same taste buds. Or preferences. And the word success in the context of food and wine pairing stopped being accurate. A better word is probably thoughtful.
So weâre back near where we started. We like wine. We like food. We like consuming them together. Thatâs about as complex as it needs to be.
The point of wine is to enjoy it, not to labor over correctness. So letâs look at how to create a food and wine pairing menu that helps people do just that.
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Syrah: For Highly Spiced Dishes
When a meat is heavily seasoned, look for a red wine with lots of spicy notes. Syrah from Washington or France’s Rhône Valley, Cabernet Franc from the Loire, and Xinomavro from Greece are all good choices. Be careful with spice heat, however: For hot dishes like those, try to avoid high-alcohol wines, which will amplify the sizzle.
Advanced Food And Wine Pairing
As always, its probably a good idea to follow the rules until you know when and how to break them. Plenty of great pairings cant be captured in one food and wine pairing chart. In fact, some of the best and most interesting defy logic. Fried chicken and Champagne? Yum, actually. Sushi and muscadet. Really? Yes! Moo shoo pork and riesling. Okay! Red chile enchiladas and merlot. Sure, lets give it a whirl.
Once you have some of the basics down how to pair the body of a wine to a dish, how to temper spice, balance fat, or match acidity youll have plenty of room to riff and explore. Then, when youre facing a meal without an obvious wine pairing say, Korean BBQ with lots of kimchi and spicy sides you can experiment. A Sangiovese with its tannins? A spicy shiraz? A tart Chianti? Any could work. Be sure to take notes about why it does or doesnt.
Pairing wine and food is an art, not a science. Just as I dont cook like a restaurant chef at home, I dont want to decide like a sommelier. So I act on instinct and learn something each time, says Asimov.
Words to live and eat and drink by.
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Creamy Buttery Or Oily Food
Lusciously buttery or creamy sauces taste delicious matched like-for-like with a lusciously rich and buttery wine. Think white Burgundy, new world chardonnay or a rich Rhône blend of roussanne, marsanne and viognier. White Rioja with its plush texture and succulent fruit is another winner for subtly cheesy sauces. Alternatively you could try a brisk, acidic white to cut through the creaminess and cleanse your palate between mouthfuls.
Opposites attract when it comes to deep-fried foods, such as fish and chips, fried chicken or bhajis, pakoras and samosas. Theyll love the cut of a whip-sharp white or bubbly to counteract the oiliness. Champagne, Cava or Crémant de Loire will do the trick, slicing through fattiness and matching the crunch of the batter or breadcrumbs, as will a sauvignon blanc or riesling.
A young, juicy, tannic red can also work well with rich, carby comfort food as tannins perform a similar role to acidity, counteracting the mouth-coating properties of the food. Any of Italys brisk red-fruited styles would work, or maybe try a Bordeaux-style blend of merlot and cabernet sauvignon.
Pinot Noir And Truffle Mac And Cheese
Pinot Noir features complex flavor notes of cherry, mushroom and vanilla. Pinot Noirs grown in cooler climates tend to be more delicate, while Pinot Noirs grown in warmer climates tend to be more full-bodied.
Pinot Noir pairs well with foods that bring out its savory notes, such as mushrooms and truffles. Try serving this type of wine with a truffled mac and cheese for a decadent contrasting pairing.
Additional Pinot Noir food pairing ideas:
- Charcuterie and sausage
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Mirror Wine & Food Flavors
Pairing wine and food with similar flavor components will also make your palate sing! For example, a wine with prominent smoky, meaty notes will pair well with complimentary food flavors. Keep in mind that maintaining a similar weight between the food and wine is still important.
Pairing Ideas:
- Picpoul de Pinet + Mahi Mahi with Lemon Wine Sauce
A Complete Wine Pairing Guide
Whether youre something of a wine expert or more of a novice, a perfectly paired glass of wine can bring your palate to life.
In the same way serving wine in the proper glass can enhance the drinking experience, a great food-and-wine pairing either emphasizes the similarities or amplifies the differences between the dish and the drink.
Below, we offer tips and suggestions to help you learn the basics so you can create your own pairings with ease.
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Identify The Basics Tastes
In this day and age, weve learned that there are over 20 different tastes found in food from the basic, including sweet, sour and fat, to the extreme, including spicy, umami and electric. Fortunately you only need to focus on 6 tastes when pairing food and wine: Salt, Acid, Sweet, Bitter, Fat and Spice .
Basic Taste Components in Wine
For the most part, wine lacks the 3 tastes of fatness, spiciness and saltiness but does contain acidity, sweetness and bitterness in varying degrees. Generally speaking, you can group wines into 3 different categories:
Basic Taste Components in Food
Simplify a dish down to its basic dominant tastes. For example, baked macaroni has 2 primary components: fat and salt. Southern barbecue is a bit more complex and includes fat, salt, sweet and spice . Even dishes without meat can be simplified. For example, a green salad offers acidity and bitterness creamed corn offers fatness and sweetness.
Consider the Intensity
FOOD: Is the food super light or super rich? A salad may seem lighter, but perhaps the dressing is balsamic vinaigrette with high acidity. If the intensity of the dish isnt obvious at first, just focus on the power of each taste component .
WINE: Is the wine light or bold? Here are a few examples:
Need more examples?
Simple Science Of Food And Wine Pairing
See the theory of food and wine pairing in action with this easy to use chart. Then, understand the simple science behind food and wine pairing based on our basic sense of taste.
You can learn the fundamentals of how taste components like sweet, sour, spice, bitter and fat go together. Then, try pairing wine by letting the characteristics of your food suggest your wine.
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Finally What Grows Together Goes Together
Its a very romantic idea the notion that wines made in a particular region will go spectacularly well with ingredients grown in, or dishes unique to, the same place.
But while this rule certainly isnt a bad place to start it doesnt help much when pairing with foods from non-traditional winemaking countries. The good news is that whether youre experimenting with kimchi, sauerkraut, Levantine cuisine or Peruvian ceviche the basic rules of balancing flavours remain the same, so have fun by experimenting with different texture and flavour combinations.
The Society’s Brand Marketing Manager
Rosie Allen
Rosie joined the team in 2016 and oversees all our content including 1874 magazine and Discovery pages.
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Sweet Food And Desserts
Sweetness in foods can seriously dull the flavours of a good dry wine, so if youre whipping up a savoury dish with a hint of sweetness , youll need to consider this when choosing a wine. As a basic rule, go for something with a touch of sweetness to mirror the ingredients, such as an off-dry riesling or chenin blanc, or try a super-fruity zinfandel or its old world counterpart, primitivo.
For properly sweet foods, youll need to take a delicious voyage into the world of dessert wines. The rule is that the wine should always be sweeter than the pudding and there are certain dessert pairings that are notoriously good: try a beerenauslese or trockenauslese riesling with a caramelised appley dessert, sauternes is amazing with baked or stewed stone fruits and tropical fruits and dessert wines taste sensational with the cheeseboard too. Gently sparkling Moscato dAsti from Italy, with its gorgeous white-peach and honeysuckle scent is a game-changer with Victoria sponge.
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Pairing Wine With Food: A Simple Guide
This useful infographic is brought to you by our BBC Good Food Wine Club and simplifies pairing food with wine to show you popular flavour combinations that work well. Make your favourite BBC Good Food recipes at home before using our guide to decide on the best bottle of red, white or sparkling wine to pair with your food.
Everyones perceptions of wine flavours are entirely different. Whether you enjoy a full-bodied red or a dry white wine, the characteristics of each tend to match certain food groups. For example, the bright and acidic notes in a bottle of sauvingon blanc go wonderfully with the sharp, salty taste of goats cheese so pairing with a goats cheese tart will taste delicious. Similarly, the full-bodied nature of malbec leaves behind notes of black plum in your mouth and such sweet flavours balance perfectly with a well-seasoned sirloin steak.
To get the best out of this guide, choose your favourite wine and then type the name of the paired dish into the search bar on BBC Good Food to find your favourite dishes. We’ve also rounded up the best wine racks for safely storing your bottles.
Are you a fan of good wine as well as good food? Sign up to the BBC Good Food Wine Club today to enjoy exclusive discounts on specially selected cases, plus free delivery.
And When In Doubt Ros Wine
White zinfandel, garnacha rosado, provence rosé
Food pairings: vegetables, roasted vegetables, starches, soft cheese, hard cheese, fish, rich fish, white meat, cured meat
When in doubt, rosé. Rosé wines have the crisp acidity of a white with the fruitiness of a red, which gives them footing with a variety of dishes and cuisines.
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What Are The 2 Basic Rules For Wine Pairings
When doing wine pairings, match the wine to the most prominent element of the dish. This could be the seasonings, sauce, or the main ingredient. For instance, chicken in a sauce with mushrooms has an earthier, richer flavorso itll need red wine, but grilled chicken with a creamy lemon sauce would pair well with a white. Thats why most wine connoisseurs recommend pairing wine with the sauce of the dish instead of the meat.
Which Ingredients Should I Consider First
Now that you’ve made all of those selections, which type of wine has the most “ticks?” That’s the one you want to have with your meal.
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