Food Pairing & Wine with Barb Ballard

I am often asked about what wine to pair with a particular food. Perfect wine and food matching is rare.  Success requires knowledge of food and a lot of good luck, and the spirit to try new things without a fear of making a mistake.

I'd like to start by defining a few words that are thrown around liberally in the wine world:

• Taste: The primary sensation in your mouth
• Flavor: The smell, PLUS the taste
• Aroma: The smell of the grapes (literally what God did)
• Bouquet: The smell of fermentation (literally what the winemaker has done to it)

Some wines and food are simply not compatible. For example, try tasting a very dry white wine with a sweet dessert. You can chalk up such a faux pas as learning experiences. Matching a wine with a wrong food can make both items taste bad.

The trick is to evoke the wine, and food memory, and play a matching game. Whenever you taste a wine, think of what flavors go with it to build your taste memory. Describe the flavors that you can taste in the wine (for example, fruity, creamy, peppery, tart) and immediately, certain foods come to mind that have the same qualities. These similarities do not mean that wine and food need to have the same traits. You can play the matching game in two ways: You can match wine with foods with similar characteristics or you can decide that opposites attract.

Since this is a blog about my opinion, I will divulge my personal guidelines:

Drink what you like.
What you like to drink always takes precedence over any recommendation that I might make.

Start by thinking about the dish or meal as a whole.

• What are its dominant characteristics?
• Is it mild or flavorful?
• Is it fatty or lean?
• Is it rich or acidic?

With these characteristics in mind, select a wine that will:

• Keep flavors in balance.

• Match mild foods with mild wines. Match big, flavorful foods with big, flavorful wines.(For example, pair a bold-flavored Pepper Steak with a spicy, bold red like JAV’s St. Croix.) Similarly you generally want to match the richness of the food and the richness of the wine. (For example, pair a rich Chicken in Cream Sauce with a rich dry white, like JAV’s Game Bird White.)

• Cleanse the palate with tannins or acids.

If you're eating a relatively rich, 'fatty' dish and think about drinking a red wine. You will want a wine with some good tannin structure to help cleanse the palate.

Match Acids with Acids

If you're eating a dish with a strong acidic content (such as Shrimp with Lemon or Pasta with Tomato Sauce)
pair it with an acidic wine that can keep up with the acids in the food.

Acidic Wines and Cream Don't Mix

Rich cream sauces will usually clash with an acidic wine. Think about it this way...If you squeezed lemon juice into a cup of milk, would it taste good?

Wine and Strong Spices

Strong spices, such as hot chili peppers in some Chinese or Indian food, can clash and destroy the flavors in a wine. In most cases, wine is not the ideal thing to drink. However, if wine is what you must have, consider something spicy and sweet itself such as JAV’s Edelweiss or 2 Brothers.

Having said all of this, most importantly DO NOT let anyone tell you that just because you prefer a semi-sweet white wine you can never order a steak again. Just as each of us appreciates art differently, each of our tastes in wine will be different. As long as you are enjoying wine and experimenting with different flavors and building your wine memory you are golden. It comes down to wine being the natural accompaniment to a meal. To me, a meal without wine is like a meal without salt and pepper.

Half the fun of pairing food and wine is not the end result, but the journey of discovery and endless reasons to indulge in more food and wine!