7 of 9 in Series:
The Essentials of Pairing Wine with Food
Every food dish is dynamic — it’s made up of several ingredients and flavors that interact to create a delicious whole. Every wine is dynamic in exactly the same way. When food and wine combine in your mouth, the dynamics of each change, and the result is completely individual to each dish-and-wine combination.
When wine meets food, several things can happen:
The food can exaggerate a characteristic of the wine. For example, if you eat walnuts (which are tannic) with a tannic red wine, such as a Bordeaux, the wine tastes so dry and astringent that most people would consider it undrinkable.
The food can diminish a characteristic of the wine. Protein diminishes the impression of tannin, for example, and an overly-tannic red wine — unpleasant on its own — could be delightful with rare steak or roast beef.
The flavor intensity of the food can obliterate the wine’s flavor or vice versa. If you’ve ever drunk a rich red wine with a delicate filet of sole, you’ve had this experience firsthand.
The wine can contribute new flavors to the dish. For example, a red Zinfandel that’s gushing with berry fruit can bring its berry flavors to the dish, as if another ingredient had been added.
The combination of wine and food can create a third-party flavor that wasn’t in either the wine or the food originally; for example, you may get a metallic flavor when you eat plain white-meat turkey with red Bordeaux.
The food and wine can interact perfectly, creating a sensational taste experience that is greater than the food or the wine alone. This scenario is ideal, but happens rarely.
Fortunately, what happens between food and wine is not haphazard. Certain elements of food react in predictable ways with certain elements of wine, giving wine drinkers a fighting chance at making successful matches.
The following sections describe some ways that food and wine interact, based on the components of the wine. Remember, each wine and each dish has more than one component, and the simple relationships between them can be complicated by other elements in the wine or the food. Whether a wine is considered tannic, sweet, acidic, or high in alcohol depends on its dominant component.
Tannic wines
Tannic wines include most wines based on the Cabernet Sauvignon grape (including red Bordeaux), northern Rhône reds, Barolo and Barbaresco, and any wine — white or red — that has become tannic from aging in new oak barrels. These wines can:
Diminish the perception of sweetness in a food
Taste softer and less tannic when served with protein-rich, fatty foods, such as steak or cheese
Taste less bitter when paired with salty foods
Taste astringent, or mouth-drying, when drunk with spicy-hot foods
Sweet wines
Some wines that often have some sweetness include most inexpensive California white wines, White Zinfandel, many Rieslings (unless they’re labeled “dry” or “trocken”), and medium-dry Vouvray. Sweet wines also include dessert wines such as Port, sweetened Sherries, and late-harvest wines. These wines can:
Taste less sweet, but fruitier, when matched with salty foods
Make salty foods more appealing
Go well with sweet foods
Acidic wines
Acidic wines include most Italian white wines; Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, and Chablis; traditionally-made red wines from Rioja; most dry Rieslings; and wines based on Sauvignon Blanc that are fully dry. These wines can:
Taste less acidic when served with salty or slightly sweet foods
Make foods taste slightly saltier
Counterbalance oily or fatty heaviness in food
High-alcohol wines
High alcohol wines include many California wines, both white and red; southern Rhône whites and reds; Barolo and Barbaresco; fortified wines such as Port and Sherry; and most wines produced from grapes grown in warm climates. These wines can:
Overwhelm lightly flavored or delicate dishes
Go well with slightly sweet foods
dummies
Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-dynamics-of-food-and-wine.html
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