Food Pairings

Pairing Basics

Most of the time, there are no really wrong pairings of food and wine. Drink what you like to drink with what you like to eat.

Some insight for what may go best together can be gathered from the old saying,

“What grows together, goes together.”

To elaborate on that, if the food genealogy of a dish is from a certain region of a specific country, drink to local wines from that region.

If you are enjoying a hunk of Parmigiano-Reggiano, than drink a wine from Emilia-Romagna, Sangiovese.

If you are in enjoying a dish of Patatas con chorizo (potatoes and spanish sausage), which is a traditional dish from the Rioja, than enjoy a great Tempranillo from there as well.

When you are ordering wine in a restaurant, have a cocktail while you are deciding what you want to eat, then look at the wine list to match the wine to the food. It never ceases to amaze me that people are expected to pick out a wine before the food in most places.

While the anything goes attitude is at the forefront today, there are a few guidelines to ensure that there are no unfortunate accidents.

The essence of pairing wine with food is about creating balance. It is about creating an experience that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The attributes used for matching wine with food are as follows:

* Weight/Body - The feel and intensity of a food or beverage.

* Total Acidity - The tartness of a food or beverage.

* Flavor/Complexity - The combined taste and aroma of a food or beverage.

These three elements all contribute to the concept of balance. When each attribute is in harmony with the others, a food or beverage is said to be "in balance". If one or more attributes are over-emphasized or decreased, then the food or beverage is said to be "out of balance".

The Five Rules for Matching Wine with Food

1.Look for compatible weights and bodies. The essence of this rule embodies the age old 'red wine with red meat, white wine with fish and white meat". In its simplest form, make sure the weight and body of the dish is consistent with the weight and body of the wine.
2.Look for compatible acidity levels. When pairing food with wine make sure that the acidity level in both are about the same. A good example is a dish like lemon chicken paired with a high acid Vernaccia from Italy.
3.Look for complementary flavors and complexities. Food and wine shouldn't fight one another for your attention. Instead they should help one another achieve synergy, complimenting each other's best traits.
4.When matching wine to a food with a pronounced sauce, pair to the flavors in the sauce. When pairing wine with food, make sure you match according to the strongest traits of each. With a fruit sauce one would look for a wine with forward and overt fruitiness to pair best.
5.When matching wine to a food without a pronounced sauce, pair to the flavors in the main ingredient. This is really a re-statement of rule four, except emphasizing that in the absence of a strong sauce, look to the flavor characteristics of the main ingredient instead.
6.Or do just the opposite and try to contrast the food and the wine. Example- a rich, cheesy cream sauce and a dry crisp Sauvignon Blanc. Something to cut through all of the heaviness of the sauce.

Key Points to Remember

Watch for amplified or diminished traits - Sometimes a pairing actually amplifies or diminishes one or more flavor characteristics, throwing the match out of balance. A good example of this phenomenon is pairing dry wine with a sweet dessert. In this pairing, the sweetness of the dessert will cause the wine to appear more acidic and more tannic than it actually is, creating a disappointing combination.

Watch for flavors that overpower - Overpowering flavors can easily throw a match out of balance, or worse, in the case of more than one overpowering flavor present, they fight on the palate, creating too great a distraction for pleasure.

Watch for new flavors - Sometimes when a wine and food come together, new flavors are born. Sometimes these flavors are pleasant and strengthen the balance and synergy of the match. At other times, these new flavors can be most unpleasant, as in the tinny, metallic flavor that gets created when medium-to-full bodied wine meets fish.

Tough Pairings

There are a number of foods that always pose the greatest challenge when paired with wine. Here are a few:

Vinegar or vinegar-based sauces

Vinegar is wine that has been acted on by a bacteria called acetobacter, which turns the alcohol in the wine into acetic acid and water. Another term for the process is called "souring". Because of this, most wines tend to taste spoiled in the presence of vinegar. Look for clean, bright, high acid wines to pair the best, whites being most favorable.

Tomato or other similarly high acid foods

Especially high acid levels in food make it tough to maintain balance. For this reason, look for high acid wines, like those made with Barbera or Vernaccia grapes to provide the greatest balance. Less acidic wines will be overpowered by highly acidic foods.

Artichoke and asparagus

The complexity and often-weedy flavors in both these vegetables make for tough wine pairing. Look for high acid, grassy wines, like Old World Sauvignon Blanc from the Loire to blend most favorably.

Egg and egg-based dishes

The sulfurous quality of the egg has a similar as vinegar, imparting an unpleasant flavor to softer wines. Look for clean, bright high acid wines to pair best, almost always white.

Cranberry sauce and other similar relishes

The cacophony of flavors that abound in cranberry sauce and pickle relish make them near impossible to pair with wine. As with vinegar and eggs, look for clean, bright and high acid wines.

Chocolate

The variability of chocolate in sweetness and texture can be difficult to pair well with wine. For sweeter chocolate, look for sweeter wines to make an effective pair, making sure to maintain balance in the weight and body of each. For semi-sweet or even bittersweet chocolate, look for drier wines to make an effective pair, again making sure to maintain balance in the weight and body of each.

Traditional Pairings

Just as there are troublesome foods to pair with wine, certain foods find an ideal mate in certain wines. Here are a few:

Cured Meats with flavorful, well-balanced and full-bodied red wines.

Suggestions: Barbera di Monferrato, Grignolino, Lambrusco, Chianti, Piave Cabernet, Montepulciano d' Abruzzo.

Foie Gras with Sauternes

Like a marriage made in Heaven, foie gras finds its perfect complement in the company of the famed white dessert wine from Bordeaux. What probably makes this pair work best is the sweet, honeyed character of the wine combined with its naturally high acidity that cuts through the rich, fattiness of the duck liver. The often-gamey quality of the liver finds a welcome cushion in the nectar like quality of the wine. If you can't find true Sauternes, then you can often substitute a similar botrytis-affected, dessert wine.

Oysters with Chablis

Chablis hails from Burgundy, France in a region where prehistoric, fossilized seashells make up most of the lower soil strata. Here the grapes are infused with the taste of chalk and the sea. What could be better to pair with the briny, chalky flavors found in fresh, raw oysters? Nothing, I think. If you can't find Chablis, then try to find a similarly weighted white wine that has seen little time in oak and comes from a region with plenty of mineral and limestone in the soil.

Grilled Beef with Red Bordeaux

Red wine from Bordeaux is often tough, tannic and highly earthy and complex. These elements pair wonderfully with the gamey, robust intensity of the grilled beef. This is especially true in the case of dry aged beef and older Bordeaux. The rich complexity of the beef blends beautifully with the subtle, unfolding complexity in the wine. If you can't find a Red Bordeaux, then look for similarly bodied wines based on Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot or Cabernet Franc.

Beef Bourgogne with Red Burgundy

Much of the synergy in this match is due to the fact that the stew is prepared with the wine being served with it. This is really true of any dish cooked with wine - the match will be best if the dish is prepared with the same wine being served. It is a fallacy that one should cook with inferior wines. When one does so, one produces inferior food.

There is also one important factor that one should always remember when matching wine with food - Cuisine from a particular country or region will inevitably pair best with the wines native in that country or region. This is largely due to the fact that wine and cuisine grow up together in a country. Where this is changing somewhat is in those areas where old wine making traditions are being replaced with more globally acceptable practices and styles. Generally, though, when all else fails - look to the native wines of a particular country to make the best dining partner.

Take the easy way out-

If you're planning a dinner or get together and wine and food is a focus of the event and you are at a loss to make each pairing ideal, then serve several different wines with the meal and allow your guests to find the matches they most prefer.

See below for pairing recommendations from Corrieri’s Formaggeria