No subject in the world of wine causes quite as much anxiety as choosing
wine for food. To alleviate this angst, the wine establishment, over
hundreds of years, slowly brought together some "rules"
concerning the proper choice of wine for food. Unfortunately, these
tired old guidelines never worked very well--and today, with so many new
foods and so many new wines, they are practically useless. So the next
time someone says you must drink white wine with fish, tell them to step
from the 19th century into the 21st.
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The most important thing to know about matching wine with food is that
anything goes. Life is a matter of taste, but food-and-wine matching is
indubitably so. You never should feel sheepish about ordering a wine you
like with a food you like, even when the "rules" and your
authoritarian
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tablemates are stacked against you. Some of the most
pleasurable matches of my life (for example, rosé with artichokes) have
involved unlikely partners.
But what do you do when you're not sure which wine you're going to like
with dinner? Does it make sense then to follow "rules"? Or
does eeny-meeny-miny-mo from the wine list do the trick? Neither. Over
the years--based on empirical data and many grueling hours of research
(ahem)--I have developed "principles" to get you through the
rough spots. These "principles" never tell you exactly what to
drink with what. But they do explain why foods and wines work together
and help you make logical on-the-spot choices.
Sweets for the Sweet
The most important thing to remember, when choosing wine for food,
is your tongue. It perceives the four basic tastes in food and wine
both, and it's those tastes that govern the realm of food-and-wine
matching: sourness, sweetness, bitterness and saltiness.
| Sourness.
You may have heard people say that wine doesn't go with
salad. The reason this wrong idea gets such wide play is that the acid
in salad dressing can wreak havoc with some wines. But if you serve an
acidic wine with that salad, the wine's sourness is negated by the
salad's sourness--leading to a pleasant, successful match. Remember:
Pick acidic wines, such as dry German Riesling, dry Vinho Verde or red
Sancerre, for acidic foods. Acidic wines also are terrific for salty
foods; briny French oysters are insanely good with crisp Muscadet, a dry
white wine made near Brittany in France, and smoked salmon is a miracle
with tart Mosel Riesling (made in one of Germany's most northerly
regions, the Mosel).
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Sweetness. During the main part of your meal, and at dessert
time, the same like-with-like principle applies: Sweet food makes sweet
wine taste less sweet. If you have, say, a California Chardonnay that's
a little sweet, as many of them are, it may taste oddly sweet with a
piece of grilled swordfish. But put a little mango-red pepper salsa on
the fish, and the wine will now taste miraculously dry. At dessert time,
a mildly sweet wine can be wiped out--turned to disagreeable lemon
juice--by a very sweet dessert. But if you make sure the dessert wine is
at least a little bit sweeter than the dessert itself (such as Sauternes
with a light pound cake), the wine will retain its sweetness (desirable
at dessert).
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| Bitterness. Once again, like-with-like is the key: Wines with a
little bitterness make foods with a little bitterness taste less bitter.
Let's say you love charred steak on the grill but don't love the slight
bitterness that the grill imparts. Young Cabernet from Bordeaux or
California also has bitterness from tannin, a substance found in grape
skins, seeds and stems that finds its way into many young reds. The
solution is at hand: Serve them together and watch the bitterness of
each one disappear.
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Saltiness. There are no salty wines, but there are plenty of
wines that relieve the saltiness of salty food. Serve acidic, un-oaky
(see below), low-alcohol wines, such as Vinho Verde from Portugal or
Galestro from Italy, with salty food. It's the same principle you see
around the world in the service of fish: The classic mate for briny
stuff from the sea is lemon, because acidity cuts salt.
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Tannin, Alcohol, Oak and Fruit
There are a few elements in wine (not in food) that also contribute
to the roster of principles: tannin, alcohol, oakiness and fruit.
Tannin, a bitter, astringent substance in wine, is good with fatty,
grilled meats. Alcohol is not a friend of food; generally lower-alcohol
wines, such as German Riesling and the Basque
Tyokali, are flexible with
food (heaven is a dry white below 12% alcohol). The taste of new oak
turns up in many wines today, because the wines are stored in new oak
barrels that impart flavor. Oaky wine, however, is rarely a friend of
food. Lastly, "fruit" is an important concept. All wine comes
from fruit, of course, but somewines taste "fruitier" than
others. Wines are fruitiest when they're young, then lose that fruit as
they age. The fruit of white wine can be almost oppressive--sometimes it
tastes like fruity bubble gum--and can get in the way of food. Young New
World white wines tend to be very fruity, young European white wines
less so. But the fruit of young red wines, which is subtler than the
fruit of young white wines, is often a boon in food-matching. In young
reds, the fruit tends to cover up some of red wine's food-difficult
elements (like tannin and bitterness), actually making the red wine even
better for food.
If All Else Fails
One question remains: How can you tell which wines are high in acid,
low in tannin, free of new oak treatment? It isn't easy, and labels
don't give you any help. With experience, you will intuit which wines
have which profile. Until then, a good wine merchant or sommelier--or
the Food Network Web site--can be a fine guide.
If all else fails, choose a young, fruity, crisp, low-alcohol, un-oaked
red wine to go with your food. It will go with practically anything but
dessert. From Europe, drink young Beaujolais. From the New World, drink
young, inexpensive, California Pinot Noir.
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