Welcome to the first part of our series Wine for the food: How to pair wine and food. Here we lay the foundation. Before we, in the coming parts, dive into beef, fish, cheese and everything else, we first need to get hold of the few basic principles that make it all much easier.
And the good thing is that pairing is not a secret art reserved for sommeliers. It is about a few quite simple connections between what you eat and what you drink. Once you have them in place, you do not need to remember a long list of which wine goes with which dish. You can reason your way there.
What you will learn
- The few principles that make wine pairing easy and manageable
- How weight, acidity and sweetness interact with the food on the plate
- Why you can confidently experiment your way forward yourself
- What to do when you are standing there in doubt at the chiller cabinet
The most important rule: weight against weight
If you only remember one thing from the whole series, let it be this one: match the wine's weight with the food's weight. Light dishes thrive with light wines. Heavy, rich dishes thrive with full-bodied wines.
Think of it as a balance scale. If one side is much heavier than the other, the whole thing tips over. A powerful, full-bodied red wine will simply drown out a delicate, steamed fish, while that fish in turn will make the big wine seem overwhelming and out of place. A crisp, light white wine with a well-braised stew? It just disappears.
A good image is to compare the wine's body to milk. Some wines feel light and thin in the mouth like skimmed milk, others are velvety and full like whipping cream. With a light salad you want something at the light end. With a braised dish that has a deep, rich sauce you want something more filling.
Remember too that it is not only about the ingredient, but about the preparation. A chicken that is steamed is a light dish. The same chicken, grilled and glazed, is suddenly much more robust and can carry a more powerful wine. The way you cook the food shifts the dish's weight.
Let the acidity work for you
The next principle is about acidity, and this is where many people have an aha moment. Acidity in wine does exactly the same thing as a squeeze of lemon over the food: it freshens things up, cuts through and readies the mouth for the next bite.
That is why fresh, tangy wines are your friend when the food is fatty or rich. Think of a creamy sauce or something fried and crisp. A wine with good acidity tidies up the palate and prevents the richness from becoming heavy and tiresome over time. It is the same reason we squeeze lemon over fish and deep-fried things.
Acidity can also meet acidity. If the dish has a tangy element, for example a vinaigrette or a tomato sauce, it works best with a wine that itself has plenty of freshness. A soft, low-acid wine will seem flat and dull next to something tangy. The rule of thumb is that the wine should ideally have at least as much acidity as the food.
Sweetness, salt and strength
Sweetness is the little classic where it goes wrong for most people. The rule is simple: the wine must be at least as sweet as the food. If you drink a dry wine with a sweet dessert, the wine ends up tasting sour and bitter, because the dessert pulls all the sweetness out of it. That is why we serve sweet wines with sweet dishes (more about that in part eight on dessert).
Salt and strength, on the other hand, are easier to deal with. Salt in food actually makes wines more friendly and round, and fresh wines love salty dishes. When it comes to powerful flavours, match strength with strength. A dish with plenty of flavour and personality calls for a wine that can answer back, while a wine with quiet, finer nuances comes into its own best next to food that does not shout too loudly.
One last thing about tannic acid, what we call tannin. It is the slightly rough, astringent sensation in a powerful red wine. Tannin and fat are best friends: the fatty meat softens the tannins and makes the wine rounder. That is precisely why a full-bodied red wine and a good steak go so well together. We go much deeper into that in the next part.
When you are in doubt
Should you find yourself completely blank, there are a couple of lifelines that almost always work.
The first is the regional shortcut. Food and wine that come from the same region have usually developed together over generations and therefore go together naturally. An Italian dish and an Italian wine from the same area are rarely a bad bet.
The second is to go for the safe weight match: something light with something light. It is the most reliable combination when you do not know which way to lean.
And then there is the most important point of all. The food is easier to adjust than the wine, so feel free to choose your food based on the wine you already feel like drinking. The rules here are tools, not laws. Your own taste always has the final word.
In short
- Match the wine's weight with the food's weight: light wines for light dishes, full-bodied wines for rich dishes.
- The preparation shifts the dish's weight, not only the ingredient.
- Acidity in wine freshens things up and cuts through fat, just like a squeeze of lemon.
- The wine must be at least as sweet as the food, otherwise it tastes sour.
- Food and wine from the same region are often a natural match.
Frequently asked questions
Should white wine always go with fish and red wine always with meat?
It is a nice rule of thumb, but not a law. The most important thing is weight and flavour intensity. A powerful fish dish can easily carry a light red wine, and a light chicken dish often thrives with a full-bodied white wine. Think in terms of weight rather than colour.
What do I do if several dishes have to share one wine?
Find the common trait across the dishes, for example whether they are broadly light or rich, and choose a versatile wine with good freshness. A wine with decent acidity is typically the most forgiving, because it suits many different dishes.
Ready for the next step?
Now you have the foundation in place, and the rest of the series just gets easier from here. In the next part, Wine for beef and red meat, we dive into the meeting between tannin and fat and find out why a good red wine and a piece of meat belong together.
Feel free to take the principles with you around our selection and see what tempts you. And then remember the most important rule of them all: the best pairing is the wine you like with the food you like. The rest is just aids along the way.