7 Simple Rules for Pairing Food & Wine

(Parade) - With holiday entertaining upon us, there’s no better time to talk about pairing wine with food. And the question we get from everyone is “What wine goes with everything?”

Well, there’s no one right answer to this question. Because the goal is to make food and wine both taste better when consumed together, your pairing depends on what you’re eating, how it’s prepared, and of course what kind of wine you like to drink. But while there’s no exact science to the art of food and wine pairing, there are some simple rules you can follow to help you pick out the right wine for whatever meal you’re having.

BEFORE PAIRING

How many times have you been told that you’re supposed to drink white wine with fish and red wine with red meat? While this may be a safe rule to follow, there’s so much more to consider than just the color of the wine! So before making any pairing decisions, you should first determine both the intensity of a dish and its key ingredients.

Intensity in food and wine refers to its weight, which depends on things such as sugar, acid, salt, spice, etc. Because you don’t want the food to overpower the wine or vice versa, you want to match the weight of a dish with the weight of a wine. This is partly why the red wine with red meat rule works—a rich, full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon pairs well with a thick, juicy, fatty steak because their intensities match.

However, would you choose the same wine if that piece of red meat was covered in a spicy sauce or was chopped up and mixed into a leafy green salad? Probably not, because the key ingredients of the dish changed and your pairing should reflect that. The idea is to match wine to the most prominent elements in a dish, which is where some simple pairing rules can be helpful.

RULE 1: SWEET WITH HEAT

Pair spicy foods with wines that have some residual sugar (example: German Riesling). Residual sugar actually cools down spice and creates balance between the food and the wine.

Alternatively, avoid pairing spicy food with highly alcoholic or tannic wine (example: Italian Barolo). The heat of the food will actually intensify the alcohol and the tannins in the wine, which in turn will make the dish seem even spicier.