The Art and Science of Pairing Food and Wine - Part 2

Last week we covered the “basics” concerning the art and science of pairing food and wine, as well as my first my five guiding principles for bringing food and wine together effortlessly. This week we’ll cover the remaining five principles for pairing food and wine. Once you master all ten principles, you will be well on your way to impressing and amazing your friends and family with your skills as an enlighted epicurean!

Wine and food tasting at Resonance Vineyards in the Willamette Valley

I love food, and I adore wine – but those of you who read this blog regularly already knew that! What you might not know is that my favorite aspect of food and wine is trying to master the puzzle of figuring out what to drink with what to eat. I find it to be an incredibly rewarding intellectual pursuit, kind of like solving a well-written mystery on my own before the author gets to the denouement!

While I usually attempt these “pairing puzzles” without any aid or assistance, sometimes I need some help or simply confirmation that my pairing solution is sound. My favorite resource for doing this is a fantastic reference book called, “What to Drink with What you Eat” by Andrew Dornenburg and Karen Page. The first part of the book lists different foods/dishes and optimal wine paring options, while the second part lists different wines/varietals and the foods/dishes that pair best with them. I use it often and it is well-worth the price!

So, let’s continue with the final five guiding principles for pairing food and wine:

• You Say Tomato, I Say Rosato. Rosé is so special that it has its own guiding principle! An amazingly versatile wine with one foot in the red wine world and one foot in the white wine world, Rosé pairs beautifully with everything from roast chicken to burgers on the grll to BBQ to seafood. But Rosé’s true food “soul mate” is the humble tomato. Pairing a dry Rosé with fresh vine-ripened tomatoes prepared in any form (with just a sprinkle of sea salt and a dash of olive oil, or a fresh tomato and mozzarella salad) is the closest you will get to experiencing culinary heaven. Also, spring and summer are the sweetest seasons for Rosé, but drink it year-round to get the most out of this lovely libation!

• Sweet and Spice and Everything Nice. Spice is what provides different cuisine their distinct character. Just try to imagine curry without garam masala, chili without cumin, or Italian sausage without fennel. Spicy dishes provide the perfect partnership for wines, and more specifically, for sweeter and fruitier wines. That’s because sweet and spice are ideal foils for each other, with one providing heat or intensity while the other moderates and complements with a cooling, sweet, and numbing sensation. Try Sichuan chicken with a sweeter off-dry Riesling, hot pepper and pepperoni pizza with a fizzy Italian Lambrusco, or spicy BBQ brisket with a fruity red Zinfandel and you’ll get it immediately.

• Sweet and Sweeter. And while we’re on the subject of sweet wines, another guiding principle for food and wine pairing is to always pair sweet dishes with wines that are slightly sweeter than the dish. That’s because sugar amplifies the tannins and acidity in drier wines, making them taste bitter, harsh and unpleasant. But sweeter wines will serve to enhance and complement the flavors of your desert. Try pairing vanilla bean Crème Brulé with a French Sauternes, or strawberry shortcake and sweet cream with a Canadian Ice Wine to experience perfect pairings of deserts and wine.

• Fair Weather Fan. Size matters. Family matters. And the weather matters as well when it comes to wine and food. We eat different foods depending on the weather, which means we should think about weather when selecting wines to pair with those foods. Big, rich red wines sipped on a hot summer day will taste flabby and tinny regardless of what you are eating. But a soft, velvety and earthy Pinot Noir enjoyed by the fire on a cold winter’s night will taste sublime paired with almost any cold-weather dish. So always consider the weather when you are pairing food and wine. Generally, lighter, fruitier, and chilled wines (even red ones!) are best in the warmer months, while richer, higher alcohol, lower acid wines work better in cooler months. And sometimes, you might just want to ditch the wine and grab a frosty cold beer or hard cider instead to quench that thirst (think burgers on the grill on the 4th of July).

• Rebel Yell. Now it’s time to get our Billy Idol on! My guiding principles are just that – they aren’t immutable. Instead, I think of them as a starting point, a baseline from which to stimulate thinking on food and wine pairings from the ground up. All that means is you have permission to dismiss, modify, or expand any or all of these principles based on your own experiences, tastes, preferences, and beliefs – that’s the “art” part of the equation! So experiment away, and create your own set of wine and food principles that work for you, even if they counter conventional wisdom. In the end, the only thing that matters is that you are happy and enjoying your food and wine pairing experience!

Next week in the last installment of this series, I’ll talk about how I applied these guiding principles to a recent seven-course wine tasting dinner Laurie and I hosted a few weeks ago and provide some additional hints for mastering the art and science of pairing food and wine!