Matching Food and Wine Isn't Rocket Science, It's Just Science
Match structure, not flavours
Last week I asked y’all if you’d like the occasional wine post here at TCP.
I’m somewhat relieved the majority said yes because I really love talking about wine.
It won’t be all the time. Food will always come front and center here.
But wine is food. So it feels fitting to include some wine content.
I’m starting by cross-posting an article I originally wrote on Medium about the secrets to food and wine pairing. I’m starting here because, much like with the recipes I post on TCP, I don’t believe wine is prescriptive. There is no perfect bottle to match with any one dish.
The trick—much like what I teach with my recipes —is to focus on structure.
Once you know how to match the structure of the wine to the structure of your dish, you blow wine pairings wide open.
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Lemony-flavored wines pair with lemony dishes, right? And you need a full-flavored red to “stand up” to a full-flavored dish, correct?
Not exactly.
Wine and food pairing may seem like an art thanks to all those verbose TV sommeliers matching every little nuanced flavor in a dish to a wine but that’s just smoke and mirrors.
Food and wine matching is so much easier than you think. It comes down to science.
Once I let you in on this secret, not only will you never have a crappy match again but you’re also going to elevate your food and wine experiences to the next level.
The two rules you need to know
Here’s the secret to matching food and wine.
You’re not matching flavors, you’re matching structure.
And by structure, I mean the acid, body, tannin, sweetness, and alcohol of the wine
The human tongue can detect 5 basic tastes: Acidity, Sweetness, Bitterness, Saltiness, and Umami (some people also argue that spiciness is the hidden 6th).
The interaction between food and wine screws with your perception of these five basic flavors. It literally changes how you perceive them in your mouth.
As such, there are two things you should know:
Salt and Acid in food = easy to match.
Bitterness, sweetness, umami, and spiciness in food = hard to match.
Salt and acid in food will lower the perceived level of acid and bitterness in a wine making it taste more fruity, and lowering your ability to detect bitter tannins (the drying sensation you get on your palate, particularly with red wines).
Bitterness, sweetness, and umami will do the opposite. They will make a wine taste more acidic or astringent and less fruity.
Spiciness in food will make the “heat” of the alcohol in the wine more pronounced.
Know this and you can stop matching flavors and start matching structure. Instead of thinking:
I need a lemon flavor in a wine to match the lemon flavor in my dish
You think:
The acidity of this dish will lower the perceived acidity in the wine, therefore I need a high-acid wine to balance.
Suddenly a whole new world is opened up. You can forget the old white wine only with fish or red wine only with steak old-school pairing BS and get creative.
Because the right food with the right wine is like magic. And it can open the door to all those wines you thought you didn’t like because they’re too oaky / dry / acidic / light-bodied / sweet.
IRL, it looks something like this
Say you’ve got an Italian red wine like a Barolo. Despite its revered status in the wine world, Barolo on its own is quite hard to drink because it’s high in acid and tannin.
The reason for this is that those food-obsessed Italians don’t make wines to drink on their own. Their wine is designed to be drunk with food. Ideally, local food.
You pair a Barolo with a well-seasoned steak, local sausages, or salty cheese and it suddenly becomes smooth, fruity, and far easier to drink.
The same goes for a full-bodied, oaky Chardonnay from the kingpin region of rich whites, Burgundy. These are also high-acid wines that can be hard to drink on their own.
But pair them with a roast chicken and properly seasoned potatoes and you’ve got a beautifully fruity, smooth, easy-to-drink wine on your hands.
Conversely, say you have a full-bodied, incredibly fruity, low acid, low tannin red on your hands. I’m thinking something like a massive Californian Zinfandel.
As delicious as that may be on its own, if it doesn’t have enough acid or structure, your brain isn’t going to like pairing it because acidic or salty food (which accounts for almost anything savory) will lower the perceived acid and tannin level in the wine even further. The result could be a flabby, boring mouthful of syrupy fruit juice.
Then there’s the bitterness-sweetness-spiciness conundrum.
Your bitter, sweet, or spicy food will make wine taste thinner, more astringent, and bitter.
To counter that, you’re going to need some sweetness in your wine.
Desserts have the highest level of sweetness, which is why we wine pros adore the good people in Sauternes for making delicious dessert wines. The sugar in the wine makes it feel incredibly full-bodied and full-flavored which means it has wiggle room in the face of food that lowers your perception of both.
It’s why many people’s go-to match with spicy food is an off-dry Riesling. The spice may level up your brain’s perception of bitterness in the wine but it won’t matter because the sugar will bring it back into balance.
When it comes to bitterness in food — think asparagus, rocket, or even eggplant — you don’t need something sweet as such, but you will want something low in tannin so your brain can handle the perceived increase in bitterness.
Your steak might be too much for a low-tannin, low-acid red wine like Beaujolais for instance, but your asparagus appetizer is going to love you for it.
As will your curry.
Here’s everything I tell my private tasting clients
Occasionally I’ll dust off the old Sommelier credentials and actually visit someone’s house for a tasting, rather than just writing about wine on the interwebs.
Today, I’m going to tell you everything I tell my clients about wine and food pairing:
The easiest food and wine pairings are in the middle of the wine spectrum
If you’ve got incredibly light, fresh white wines on one end of the wine spectrum (e.g. Muscadet) and very full-bodied, fruity, low-acid wines on the other (e.g. Californian Zinfandel), the best, most successful food and wine pairings happen in the middle of that spectrum.
Think medium-full-bodied whites through to medium-bodied reds. These are the bottles that are easiest to pair.
It’s why you can pair steak with a full-bodied Burgundian Chardonnay and fish with a light-bodied red Beaujolais. It’s why rosé — especially the medium-hued dry ones — pair with just about anything (a pro tip for you there).
The extremely light, acidic white wines are amazing when paired with the likes of fish and seafood but structurally won’t stand up to a big wintery stew. A full-bodied red might be just the ticket in that case, but it’s never going to pair with a plate of squid.
Stick to the middle lane for maximum impact.
Decide what you want to be the star of the show
Unless all your mates are incredibly geeky food and wine nerds and all they talk about is what goes in their gobs, I always recommend that you make one thing the star of the show — the food or the wine.
If you’ve got an elaborate dinner that took you five hours to cook, you don’t want it to compete with an incredibly fancy wine. I’d keep the wine simple to let the food shine.
Conversely, if you have an amazing bottle you want to open, why not keep the food simple so the focus can be on the wine?
Drink (almost) whatever you like with whatever food you like
This is the biggest secret of them all — there is no perfect food and wine pairing if you don’t like the food or the wine.
If you hate sweet dessert wine, you’re never going to want to pair it with your pudding. If you want to drink full-bodied reds with your seafood, you won’t want a recommendation of a light, minerally white.
My customers would always ask me for food and wine recommendations but I would always ask them what they like in wine first and go from there.
Because if they hate my idea of a perfect match, what’s the point?
There is so much discourse around wine that is just plain wrong. That includes food and wine pairing.
It’s not about flavors, it never was. If you’re not matching structures, you’re not going to have the taste explosions your friendly TV sommelier promised you would.
Successfully matching food with wine isn’t life or death. But knowing how to do will elevate your food experiences. It will open you up to trying new wines you’ve never thought of trying.
Don’t like dry, tannic, acidic reds? Not a Sherry fan? You might be after you pair them properly (FWIW — pair dry Sherry with almonds, olives, and jamón).
A little bit of scientific knowledge in life never hurts. Especially when it means you can have even better food and beverage-based experiences.
Food and wine may not be life or death, but it is life.
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A delightful, informative read! Thank you!
Absolutely great piece. I just love writing that demistifies subjects that have a reputation as being impossibly difficult.