One of the hardest things to tackle about wine, in my opinion, is pairing wine with food. But you know, I don’t think this is actually to do with it being hard, but more about there being so many rules! Even when researching this article, I found my head spinning. There was so much advice it was hard to know where to start. And so many rules to follow that made it seriously complicated. So I decided to write an easy guide on how to match food and wine. It doesn’t contain every rule under the sun, but this guide has got the basics. Because the truth is: You can pretty much eat whatever you want while drinking whatever wine you want.
The fundamentals of how to match food and wine
Pairing food and wine could be compared to creating a piece of art. This is because it uses one of the basic principles of art composition: balance and contrast. That, and matching food and wine is a beautiful thing!
At its basic level, you need to consider what the components are of both the food and wine. Understanding what the profile of the wine is, and what the profile of the food is, helps you to then create balance and contrast in the pairing.
When looking at a wine, you can get clues from the colour, grape variety, alcohol level, winemaking techniques and the region’s climate. This helps you determine the characteristics of the wine such as acidity, tannin, body, alcohol and texture. Then, you can look at the dish’s ingredients and flavours.
If there’s one thing you take away from this article, the most basic pairing concept is to pair weight and richness. A rich dish requires a heavy wine, and a delicate wine matches with delicate food. If you can use this concept you are sure to have a good time without getting stuck into more specific rules.
For wine, this is relatively easy to determine, but for food, fat is the main contributor. This comes from the cooking method and the sauce. For example, a salad with blue cheese dressing will be heavier than one with a citrus vinaigrette.
Using balance and contrast in your pairings
Matching weight in the food and wine is an example of using balance or harmony. But contrast can also be just as good a pairing. For example, a creamy sauce could pair with a creamy Chardonnay (harmony) or a crisp Sauvignon Blanc (contrast). This is why although there are various ways to approach food and wine pairings, there are really two categories that follow this similar concept. Congruent and complementary pairings.
Congruent Pairings
With congruent pairings or using balance/harmony, the food and wine will share several compounds or flavours. The benefits of a congruent pairing are that it allows the wine and food to enhance the flavours of each other. Examples include pairing sweet dessert wine with a sweet dish, or a Chardonnay with a buttery pasta dish. You just need to make sure that the flavours in the wine aren’t overwhelmed by the flavours of the food as it will make the wine taste bland.
Red wines are a great go-to for congruent pairings as their flavour profiles are very diverse, making them easy to match with food pairings. This is why steak and shiraz are such a great combination!
Complementary Pairings
On the flipside, complementary pairings are matches where food and wine combinations share no compounds or flavours, but instead, complement each other. The flavours of each are balanced by their contrasting elements.
Rosé, White, and Sparkling wine are all great choices for complementary pairings. For example, a sweet wine paired with a spicy dish will balance out the heat. Another example is pairing white wine with salty dishes. The saltiness from the food brings out the fruity taste and aromas in the wine.
Matching to food flavour profiles
Now that we’ve got the basics, let’s dive into something a little more advanced. Understanding the different components of food can help you choose the best wine to match. This is because each component of the food either complements or impacts the flavours you get from the wine and the dish.
So let’s dive into these components and how they impact the wine so you have a bit more of an idea of what to pair with what. And feel free to use this handy chart I made to help you with the impact of food on wine:
Salt
Salty food can really impact the taste profile of a wine. It’s quite common in a variety of food but especially in fried foods, pasta sauce and potatoes.
Acidic wines are a great complementary pairing to salt and balance the flavours within a dish. This is because salty foods momentarily block your taste buds awareness of acidity. So adding a wine with high acidity helps to balance this out and improve the taste.
A classic pairing? Champagne and fries!
Fat
Fat is not something that you can find in a wine profile, so pairing fatty foods with wine is key to complementary pairings. The best profile in wine to pair with fatty foods is tannins. The bitterness created by tannins in wine soften the fat and enhance flavours.
Tannins are found in red wines and rosés but are not really obvious in white wines. They don’t pair well with sweet or spicy dishes as the flavours become too pronounced. But pair a full-flavoured red with rich red meat and you have a winner.
This is why something like a Cabernet pairs so well with smoky flavours within the meat. The fruity flavours complement this, and also the tannin cuts through the fat.
Sweet
The level of sweetness in a dessert is important to take note of when pairing wine with desserts. As a general rule, the wine should taste sweeter than the dessert otherwise its flavour will be stripped.
Why? Sugar amplifies acidity, so an acidic wine will taste sharp and bitter when paired with sweet foods. This is the same with tannins as sugar enhances bitterness.
Acidity
Acidity as a flavour profile is common to both food and wine. This makes it easy to use for both complementary and congruent pairings when matching wine and food.
Acidity can add freshness to both wine and food. The acid in food becomes either balanced or cancelled by the wine, so you need to match the levels carefully.
When creating a pairing, the acidity in the wine should be at least equal to the food or the wine will be bland. So make sure the wine is more acidic than your food!
This is why acidity can be a bit of a double-edged sword as competing sharpness can make the wine seem lacking in vibrancy. On the flip side, acidity in a dish can improve a wine that tastes a bit flat by adding fullness and fruitiness.
Great examples of acidic wines that pair well with acidic food are Champagne, dry riesling, sauvignon blanc, Gavi, Albarino and even cool-climate pinot noir or grenache. Super-fruity reds go very well with tomato-based pasta recipes that might have that kick of acidity.
Bitter
There are both bitter foods and bitter wines, but as a general rule, they do not play well together. Avoid congruent pairings with this one, as the bitterness in the food enhances the bitterness in the wine and vice versa. This is not a nice tasting experience.
For bitter food, try complementary pairings such as acidic wines like off-dry Riesling or Zinfandel.
Spicy
Spicy foods are a tricky one but can be used in both complementary and congruent pairings. Spicy foods increase the taste of bitterness and acidity and decrease the body and sweetness of a wine.
It’s important to match the intensity of the food with the intensity of the wine. So the more kick the food has, the sharper the flavours should be.
Spicy food also reduces sweetness in the wine, making dry wines taste sour. On the flip side, the alcohol in high alcohol wines brings out the heat on the palate, accentuating the burning in the mouth.
So what should you pair with spicy food? Look for fruity, low alcohol wines with a bit of sweetness. Otherwise, light reds such as Beaujolais can be a great pairing.
In summary – How to match food and wine
When it comes to how to match food and wine, the options are endless. There are a million ways it can be done, and plenty of rules out there to tell you what you can and can’t do. But what is the right way to pair food and wine?
Well, the best rule I can give you is to eat and drink what you enjoy. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t drink that with that meal. If you really want to drink a heavy red with your salad, do it! No one is going to stop you, and if you enjoy it great!
However, if you want to learn more about pairing food and wine, I hope this guide has helped to give you a couple of handy hints. I’m not one to overthink these things, but it can be really fun trying out different pairings! So next time you’re grabbing a bottle of wine for your meal, think back to this article and try some things out. You never know, you might find your new favourite pairing!