Pairing
General Guidelines
Select light-bodied wines to
pair with lighter food, and fuller-bodied wines to go
with heartier, more flavorful dishes. Pinot
Noir works beautifully with the fish because you are
matching light to light. Otherwise a full-bodied, heavier
wine will overpower a light, delicate dish, and similarly,
a lighter style wine will not even register on your
personal flavor meter if you sip it with a hearty roast.
You may as well drink water.
Consider how the food is prepared.
Is it grilled, roasted, or fried, for instance, and
what type of sauce or spice is used? For example, chicken
with a lemon butter sauce will call for a different
more delicate wine to play off the sauce than chicken
cacciatore with all of the tomato and Italian spices,
or a grilled chicken breast.
For every food action, there is a wine reaction.
When you drink wine by itself it tastes one way, but
when you take a bite of food, the wine tastes different.
This is because wine is like a spice. Elements in the
wine interact with the food to provide a different taste
sensation like these basic reactions:
Sweet Foods like Italian tomato sauce, Japanese teriyaki,
and honey-mustard glazes make your wine seem drier than
it really is so try an off-dry (slightly sweet) wine
to balance the flavor (Chenin Blanc, White Zinfandel,
Riesling).
High Acid Foods like salads with balsamic vinaigrette
dressing, soy sauce, or fish served with a squeeze of
lemon go well with wines higher in acid (Sauvignon Blanc,
Pinot Grigio, Pinot Noir). White Zinfandel, although
not as high in acid, can provide a nice contrast to
high acid foods.
Bitter and Astringent Foods like a mixed green salad
of bitter greens, Greek kalamata olives and charbroiled
meats accentuate a wine's bitterness so complement it
with a full-flavored forward fruity wine (Chardonnay,
Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot). Big tannic red wines (like
many red Zinfandels, and Shiraz or Syrah wines) will
go best with your classic grilled steak or lamb chops,
as the fat in the meat will tone down the tannin (bitterness)
in the wine. |
