Why Pair Wine With Food
Like Bogart and Bacall, children and puppies, or peanut butter and jelly, some things are just meant to be together. It’s no different when pairing wine with food. Wine was made to go with food, so when paired together properly, the resulting flavor combinations can really bring out the best of both the wine and the food.
How wine tastes in your mouth can vary widely depending on its serving temperature, the shape of the glass it’s served in, its age, as well as the types of food you eat with it. The food you choose to serve with a particular wine can cause the wine to taste better or worse, be overpowered by the food, or add new flavor dimensions to the wine that can sing like a symphony on your palate. This is why top chefs think long and hard about what wine goes with their dishes and suggest particular varieties in order to best compliment both the food and the wine qualities together.
This marrying of flavors has a certain level of science to it that can make choosing the right food for the right wine predictable to a point. Most people know that food consists of four basic tastes: sweet, sour, salt, and bitter. This is what our tongues can detect in the many foods we eat. This translates well with wine because wine falls into four flavor categories as well: sweet, acidic, alcohol, and tannic. Knowing this, we can easily combine wine with food based on their complementary or contrasting aspects and elements.
Like the many colors on a color wheel, ones that are close together go best together, so wine that is close in flavor to the food it is paired with go well together. For example, sweet desserts should be served with an even sweeter dessert wine, lobster soaked in butter should be paired with a buttery tasting Chardonnay, mushroom dishes should be served with an equally earthy wine like red Burgundy, and bitter grilled eggplant goes nicely with a tannic Cabernet Sauvignon.
Colors that are placed directly opposite of each other on the color wheel are considered contrasting colors, but they also go well together. Therefore, wines and foods that contrast each other can also work well together. Much like mixing sweet chocolates with salty pretzels, the contrasting tastes just work for some reason. For instance, spicy foods work well with sweet wines, like Riesling. Salty cheeses go well with sweet wines, like Sauternes. Fatty, oily foods, like smoked salmon, can be served with acidic white wines, like Muscadet.
Another thing to consider is the weight of a wine in comparison to the food it is served with. Lighter wines should be paired with lighter foods and heavier wines should be paired with heavier foods. The logic behind this methodology is to not allow the wine or the food to overshadow or overwhelm the other. They should be balanced and working together, not against each other. Pinot Grigio and Riesling are considered lighter white wines, while White Bordeaux and Viognier are considered heavier. Beaujolais and Dolcetto are considered lighter red wines, while Barolo and Barbaresco are considered heavier. Lighter meals, like fish, go best with the lighter varieties of wine and heavier meals, like lamb, go better with the heavier wines.
While pairing wines with food can certainly be very confusing and complicated, these simple rules will at least get you going in the right direction. Oh course, trial and error are the best ways to learn, so eat, drink, and be merry!
