Wine pairing is an art that has been perfected by some people (read Italians) better than others. However, each region has the process of pairing their wines and food depending on some factors. Luckily, wine pairing is an art that one can learn with help, and we have all the information you need.
Our detailed food and wine matching guide helps you decide which wines to pair with a wide variety of meat, poultry, fish vegetarian dishes as well as desserts and cheese.
The matching of food and wine is a matter of personal taste. There are no hard and fast rules, but just remember it is easiest to think of wine as a sauce and match the strength of flavors and weight of the dish with the wine.
Sourced from: http://www.bbr.com/wine-knowledge/food-and-wine
It is important to note that pairing food and wine is dependent on individual taste and perception. The following are some techniques that wine enthusiasts have utilized over the years;
1.Regional Pairing
The idea of a regional pairing is pretty fundamental. Imagine Italian wine and Italian food or an Oregon pinot noir with a cow’s-milk cheese from the Willamette Valley. Regional matches are not always the perfect pairing, however they provide a template for us to understand more about what’s going on structurally with wine & food pairings.
2.Acid + Acid
Unlike bitter, acidity can be added together with food and wine and will create the basis of what wine people think about when selecting a wine with dinner. If the wine has less acidity than the food, the wine will taste flat. An easy visualization for acids out-of-balance is a glass of oaked warm climate chardonnay with a vinaigrette salad. When pairing a dish with wine, consider the acid balance between the food and the wine.
3.Sweet + Salty
If you love maple bacon, candied pecans and salted caramels, a wine and food pairing of a sweet wine with a salty food will probably delight you. Pair Riesling with Asian foods such as fried rice or Pad Thai, or try one of my favorite “low calorie” desserts of pretzels and tawny port.
4.Bitter + Bitter = No
Bitter does not go well with more bitter, which is the primary reason why I loathe red wine and chocolate pairings. When we feel fat in the middle of our tongues, it helps to alleviate bitterness.
5.Bitter + Fat
Grab a big thick piece of fatty something-or-other and pair it with a wine with lots of tannin. This is the classic steak with red wine food pairing; however, I think we can do better than that. Take a red wine such as an Italian Sangiovese with lots of cherry flavors and pair the wine with an herbed potato croquette, roasted red tomatoes and rocket (a classic Tuscan Secondi). Suddenly you have a dish that has the tannin balanced with the fat in the croquette and a congruent flavor in the dish and wine (tomato and cherry) that elevate each other. I am already drooling.
6.Acid + Fat
Nothing like a glass of champagne to cut the fat. A high acid drink will add a range of interesting flavors to a lipid heavy dish. This is why white wine butter sauce is popular (you can watch a video of How to Make Buerre Blanc if you would like) the white wine in the butter sauce livens up the whole dish. So when you are in a situation where there is something fatty like cheesecake, get a glass of something bubbly and zippy.
7.Alcohol + Fat
The alcohol category is a bit of a strange one. The alcohol taste actually comes across as acidity so a lot of the same ideologies of the Acid + Fat category pass over into Alcohol + Fat. The primary difference is that a high alcohol drink should not be used as a palate-cleanser because that will mess you up. Instead, look at an alcohol + fat category as a way to mitigate high-speed food consumption. A glass of 17% ABV zinfandel will greatly slow down the rate at which you consume your pepper steak. I use the alcohol + fat category often for dessert pairing, but I’d like to see it more in dining as we learn to eat slower and enjoy longer.
Sourced from: http://winefolly.com/tutorial/food-and-wine-pairing/
