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Wine Pairing 101
Wine pairing is the tedious process of complementing your meals with the perfect wine in hopes of elevating the dish. Food and wine pairing is a game of matching complementary avors with the goal of highlighting each component and what it o ers to the meal. It’s important that you pair your food with a wine that you’ll actually like. If you usually don’t do white wines, you probably won’t like a glass of it with food. Stick to what you enjoy and branch out from there.
Did you know that there are 20 di erent tastes found within our food? Fortunately, we focus on 6 tastes when pairing food and wine: salt, acid, sweet, bitter, fat and spice. Wine lacks 3 tastes: fat, spice and salt. But wine does contain acidity, sweetness and bitterness, in varying degrees.
As a rule of thumb: • Red wines are more bitter. • White, rosé and sparkling wines have more acidity. • Sweet wines have mostly sweet notes.
The two methods of wine pairings are congruent pairings and contrasting pairings. Congruent pairings have many shared compounds. By pairing similar avors, they amplify each other and create a nice balance, such as beef and mushrooms. Contrasting pairings have few shared avor compounds but create balance by amplifying the compounds they do have in common, such as coconut and lime.
First, simplify a dish down to its basic, prominent tastes. For example, baked ziti has two primary components: fat and salt. Even dishes without meat can be simpli ed. For example, a salad o ers acidity and bitterness; creamed corn o ers fattiness and sweetness. From there you can decide if a congruent or contrasting pairing would better suit the dish.
Regardless of your personal preferences on wine, we hope you can fi nd a bottle that the entire family will love to share this holiday season! ■
For beginners, keep these tips in mind:
• The wine should be more acidic than the food. • The wine should be sweeter than the food. • Red wines pair best with bold avored meats, such as red meats. • White wines pair best with light-intensity meats, such as sh or chicken. • Bitter wines are best balanced with fat. • It is better to match the wine to the sauce than with the meat. • Most often, white, sparkling and rosé wines create contrasting pairings. • Most often, red wines create congruent pairings.
