Wines At Top Information

Pairing wine and food is the topic for this installment of our wine guide…

The taste of a wine can improve or worsen depending on the food that you drink it with. Although there are only a few combinations which really don’t work, learning the basics about pairing them will bring out the best in both.

When pairing food and wine, you can take one of two approaches: pair a wine with a contrasting food taste, like combining a sweeter wine with spicy foods; or use a complementary combination, in which the food and wines share similar characteristics. Either style of pairing will work well; choosing one way over the other is just depends on the type of food being served and your personal preference.

Regional combinations are worth paying attention to as food originating from a particular region or country will often pair well with the local wines, as they have both evolved to complement one another. The foods that are hardest to combine with wines are egg dishes, acidic foods, and hot and spicy selections. There are no specific rules or recommendations for these, and it’s really a case of hit and miss. Personal experimentation is necessary if you insist on pairing wine with such foods.

Here are some examples of wine and food pairings: beef is best paired with Cabernet Sauvignon, Burgundy, Bordeaux, Zinfandel or Pinot Noir; lamb pairs well with Bordeaux, Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Gris, or Medoc; poultry served with a light sauce pairs well with Chardonnay, Chablis or White Burgundy; poultry served with a heavy or spicy sauce goes well Zinfandel, Pinot Noir or Beaujolais; fish is best served with Sauvignon Blanc or White Burgundy.

However, though these are said to be classic pairings, that doesn’t mean that you’ll necessarily like all of them. Keep in mind that your palate is unique to you, so if you don’t like a combination, don’t use it. It’s important to also remember that some people only drink one kind of wine, no matter what food is being served. Therefore, you should always have different varieties on hand when entertaining other people. Make a suggestion to them, but still give them a choice.

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When it comes to tasting wine, there are three aspects: smell, taste, and finish. We’ll look at each of those individually.

Swirling your wine in your glass is the first step to smelling it; this process exposes the most amount of the wine to air, which helps release its aromas. To swirl effectively, don’t fill the glass too full – in fact less than half full is recommended. Put the wine glass up to your nose as you’re swirling and think about the aromas that are being released.

While swirling, put your glass up to your nose and inhale, thinking about what kinds of aromas you’re experiencing. Young wines will have primary aromas, relating to the grape variety (such smells are often fruit related). As wines age more secondary aromas develop, which may be more earthy or animalistic. Remember that a wines aromas can take on many different forms, and very rarely will it simply smell of grapes.

When you taste wine, it’s important to realize that little of the flavor that can be sensed actually involves the tongue. In fact, its your nose that does the tasting, even when wine is in your mouth; this is because the aromas of the wine seep into your nasal passages from your mouth.

Therefore, you should breathe steadily through your nose whilst the wine is in your mouth, thinking about how the wine changes as you inhale and exhale. There are different segments to the taste of wine as it remains in your mouth: the fore-palate refers to your first impression, the mid-palate to your taste after a few seconds, and the end-palate to the wines final flavor. Each of these will be different, so look out for the changes in taste.

The finish describes the sensations derived from swallowing the wine. It will often be different to how the wine came across on the palate. You might notice the wines flavors remaining on your palate after you swallow, and this feeling is called length. The more length a wine has, the more time you have to enjoy it, and it’s probably true to say that such wines are generally of better quality.

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