The Secrets of Food & Wine Pairing: How To Eat, Drink & Be Merry Every Time
The topic of food-and-wine pairing is seriously overdone. You’d think it was advanced rocket science to hear some of the self-proclaimed experts prattle on about “the perfect match” or “the ideal pairing.”
Sure, tannins seem harsher with spicy foods, more acidic wines cut cream sauces nicely, matching peppery or fruity or earthy dishes with a peppery Syrah or a fruity Dolcetto or an earthy Pinot Noir usually makes for a good match, but so what? How about a fruity Grenache with that pepper steak or a peppery Zweigelt with that rather bland but quite tasty Wiener Schnitzel—pairings that ignore the rules but that are every bit as good. The secret is … that there are no secrets, only a few common sense caveats. Just drink what you like and enjoy your food.
Don’t forget, the purpose is to enhance your experience, not to follow a set of arbitrary dictates that someone else, with too much time on his or her hands, has declared to be the one or the only or the best way to choose what you should drink with dinner.
And never drink something you don’t like because a magazine article or wine column has declared it a perfect match with whatever you’re eating. If you don’t like a wine—because it’s red and very tannic or white and over-oaked or sweet or sour or whatever—it makes for a decidedly imperfect match. So begin with something you enjoy. Whether you’re having it with food or not. Just using your common sense will assure that you have a pretty decent food-and-wine match about nine times out of ten.
The general guidelines say pair a rich, heavy food dish with a rich, full-bodied wine. Heavy food with a full-bodied wine; rich flavor with rich flavor. Hmm … okay. Or match something light, say oysters or white fish, with an equally light and delicate wine. Sounds reasonable, but every beer afficiando knows that stout and oysters is a terrific, classic pairing. And it’s a stretch to accuse stout of being light and delicate. Sure, one is beer, the other is wine. But the point is that while rules and guidelines are helpful, they’re not absolute. Each of us has our own peculiar palate.
Historically, Russians and Germans have favored wines that are far sweeter than those generally enjoyed in France or Spain. Italians appreciate wines with high acidity, while Californians and Australians steer away from them. Our sense of taste is an incredibly complex set of reactions incorporating everything from social customs to ingredients to temperature to memory to when we last brushed our teeth. In other words, it’s both extremely personal and widely variable.
Do you love a good hot dog now and then? In Chicago, that would mean “pairing” your frank with onion, bright green sweet relish, hot peppers, a pickle spear, tomato slices, yellow mustard and celery salt. In Phoenix you’ll get it bacon-wrapped with pinto beans, mayo, some queso fresco, jalapeños, and guacamole. New Englanders love their Coney Island dogs, covered in minced meat, mustard and steamed onions. Buy a dog on the streets of New York and it’s topped with sauerkraut, maybe mustard and ketchup and minced onion to boot. Down South it’s likely to be smothered in coleslaw. So who’s right and who’s wrong?
Exactly. No one. And everyone. It’s a matter of taste, not tyranny.
To wit:
A beer drinker has but recently taken up the pleasures of wine. She (or he) joins a group, a table, a conference of business clients or associates, or of friends and acquaintances. “Shall we share a bottle?” she inquires. “Of course,” comes the collective reply, followed by, “Have you a suggestion?”
Ha—it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. And it’s here that her (or your) hipness really begins to shine.
First tip: Relax—and enjoy. Wine is about pleasure and fun and good times as much as it’s about anything. In any group, one or two people will immediately disqualify themselves from choosing a wine for everyone else to share. It’s like an auto race and two of your competitors spin out on the first lap.
Second tip: Smile—and make it clear you’re happy to choose the wine. Stepping up—i.e., assuming the “burden”—takes the pressure off the others and makes everyone feel good.
And if you’re a rank beginner, disclose. (Remember, this is nothing more than a fleeting good time.) “To be honest, though, I should tell you the only wines I really know much about are Sauvignon Blancs from New Zealand and Merlots and Cabernet Sauvignons from Washington state.”
“That’s more than I know.”
“That’s probably more than most of us know!”
“So let’s have one of those.”
See. Girls (and guys) just wanna have fun. Don’t sweat the small stuff. You might start by asking what kind or style of wine the others like. And no doubt you’ll get a few in-depth answers like “red” or “white.” But someone might mention a country or a type, Italian or something juicy but not too strong. Hint: when novice drinkers refer to a wine as strong, they usually mean a full-bodied, tannic red as much as they mean one with high alcohol.
If one or more of your mates answers “Australian Shiraz,” you know at least one person is in the market for something fruity and rich; if another yells out “Châteauneuf-du-Pape” and you know nothing about Châteauneuf-du-Pape, just say “okay.” In fact, until you’ve accumulated a pretty good body of wine knowledge, it’s perfectly acceptable to fall back on a number of standard selections when choosing wine for a group.
If you’re sharing a meal and everyone is having fish or chicken or something on the lighter side, an easy guideline is to select a white, possibly an unoaked Chardonnay (too much oak diminishes its ability to complement a wide range of foods). But another choice might be a New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc (though good Sauvignon Blanc is also produced in California, and a French Sancerre or Pouilly-Fumé is always a great expression of that variety) or a Pinot Gris from Oregon or Alsace.
Riesling can be an excellent choice as well, though you should know if the wine being considered is dry or has some degree of sweetness, and how your fellow drinkers feel about sweet wine. Those who like sweet wines tend to love them; those who don’t, find them horrible. The best bets for dry Rieslings are Australia, Austria and Alsace—couldn’t make that much easier to remember—and for those with some sweetness, look to Germany or even Washington.
Should everyone’s food selection revolve around meat—steak, prime rib, lamb, burgers, ribs, etc.—you can safely choose almost any good red: a Burgundy or an Oregon Pinot Noir, Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia, California, Washington or Chile, Malbec (Argentinian, of course), Syrah or Grenache or various blends thereof from somewhere in either southern France or Australia. All delicious, all great with a variety of hearty foods.
Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be. Calma, baby.
Matching weight and texture is a pretty good start to food-and-wine pairing. Rich, heavy foods go well with rich, heavy wines. Conversely, light food and light wine seem to likewise enjoy each other’s company.
Spicy food benefits from a bit of sweetness in a wine, be it a red Zinfandel with some residual sugar, a fruity Shirazor an off-dry Gewurztraminer or Riesling.
The dominant flavor in many dishes comes from the sauce, so consider a citrusy wine with a lemonysauce. Or don’t. Try anything that sounds interesting; find the matches you like.
If you enjoy tannins and chilies or full-bodied, high-alcohol wines with oysters on the half-shell, so what? It’s your palate. Keep experimenting. You’ll figure out what you do and don’t like—without the rules.
And by the way, a little inside info: Champagne does go with just about everything!
And if your crew has chosen a mix of fish and fowl and meat and veggie dishes—those dirty rats—reach for the universal: Pinot Noir. Good Pinot has gorgeous red fruit flavors and great acidity, so it makes an almost-fail-safe food wine. Another great choice might be that previously mentioned juicy Grenache, perhaps from Australia or maybe Spain (the grape’s homeland, where as you’ll recall, it’s known as Garnacha). It’s medium-bodied, red-fruit-forward, with typically high alcohol (good and bad at the same time), low tannins and an easy-going but distinctive personality.
The real key is to not panic. It’s just grape juice. In the long run, who cares whether it was merely a good selection or a great one? It’s wine, a gift, a wonderful anomaly of nature. Take a look at a bunch of grapes—who’da thunk it? Who would have imagined that this tight, compact, self-contained cluster of berries had the power to produce one of humankind’s most important, and earliest, comforting, mind-altering restoratives? Think of the thanks due Mother Nature, in whatever guise she has most recently adopted.
