Food & Wine, not Food vs. Wine

Chefs and sommeliers work together to create amazing meals with delicious pairings. Food and wines can work together in perfect harmony, complement each other, or challenge each other and create unexpected flavor combinations. Here are some tips to elevate your meals at home!

Generally speaking, you can't go wrong by pairing like with like - light dishes need a light body wine & rich creamy dishes need a heavier wine. Look for common denominators of flavor or texture. Pepper crusted meat with peppery red Zinfandel; buttery lobster with California Chardonnay; a rich Filet Minon with a rich velvety Merlot. 

Make sure the flavors work together: Salty & sour flavors bring out the positive characteristics of flavor; Sweet & bitter bring out the negative. 

Think of the book Salt, Acid, Fat, Heat. All of these are components of a delicious meal, and they work best in balance.

• Salty foods can limit your wine selections. Generally, acidic wines work with salty foods. Acidic wines match well with salty seafood - oysters and Champagne are a classic combination, after all!
• When eating acidic foods, you'll want the wine to be able to stand up to the acid. Make sure you choose something with perceived acidity that is roughly equal. Or cut down your acid in your food somewhat and try a tangy, bitter element instead. 
• Fat allows for many great combinations - which is why steaks and cheeses are traditional pairings with great wines. Heavier dishes with more fat need heavier wines, in general, acid cuts through fat & tannins stand up to fat. 
• Heat - and here we mean spicy foods - need to be balanced out with the right type of wine. A high-tannin red wine will be a terrible match, but a red with big fruity flavors will hold up well.  Reds in lighter styles like Beaujolais, fruity young Merlot, or Valpolicella, and Dolcetto from northern Italy work well. And for Asian spiced dishes, consider a crisp, lightly sweet white like Gewürztraminer or sparkling wine.

Some rules of thumb as you experiment:

• Let the wine be the missing component to a dish.
• Let the wine be a pleasing contrast to the food.
• When in doubt go regional (Italian dishes with Italian wine, French dishes with French wine etc.)
• Look at the whole picture (preparation, sauces, side dishes etc.)
• Spicy foods pair best with slightly sweet wines and are a terrible match for high-tannin wines
• Dessert wines should be sweeter than the dessert