Wine Tasting 101: Wine and Food

LESSON TWO

Everyone loves to eat. But eating can be an art, too. Sure, TV dinners can get us from one meal to the next, but who doesn't enjoy going out to a special restaurant once in a while for a more elaborately prepared dinner prepared by a chef who understands how different ingredients can work together to create scrumptious flavors?

Ingredients and flavors can work together to create sensations of taste that are more rewarding to the palate than the component items, tasted separately. Butter on mashed potatoes. A sprinkle of malt vinegar on fish and chips. Fresh chopped basil on ripe tomato slices. Whipped cream or cheddar cheese on apple pie.

The flavors of wine can combine with foods in just this way, raising the level of enjoyment beyond that which either could deliver alone. I don't know why God created whiskey, but he must have had food in mind when he created wine. Throughout the history of civilization wine has been associated with food. The dilemma we face is how to choose the best wine to accompany a certain meal.

Wines work with food in two ways; a general way and a specific way. Simple wines - red, pink, or white - can add a dimension of enjoyment to a wide spectrum of foods. Simple wines are best served with simple foods. In Italy, nondescript dry red wines are customarily drunk unceremoniously in small tumblers with ordinary home-cooked foods. You might choose other beverages: coffee, tea, mineral water. They work in a similar way; they don't overpower the flavors of the food, and they don't particularly enhance them. You might hit upon a happy combination where a simple wine actually does enhance the food - a dry red wine with pizza or spaghetti marinara, for example. That would be much nicer than coffee or milk.

But there's another dimension to wine and food pairing. Certain wines can provide specific complementary flavors which combine with foods to create a kind of marriage. There are many classic combinations: port with Stilton cheese, sweet Sauternes with foie gras, Zinfandel with a barbecued steak, Pinot Noir with duck, Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah with roasted red meats and savory stews, Sauvignon Blanc with delicate, unsauced fish dishes; Cabernet Sauvignon with dark chocolate (yes! Tastes like chocolate-covered cherries and mitigates the sweetness of the candy).

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