Divine Food and Wine
How to choose the perfect wine to compliment any meal.
When planning a meal, the food isn’t the only thing that needs to be taken into consideration. Pairing the right wine with your repast can make a big difference in the overall flavor and enjoyment you experience. But with thousands of different types of wines, where do you begin? Thankfully, Stan Minden, all around wine guy at Chalet Party Shoppe, has some advice to help guide you through pairing your wine and food.
For starters, Minden recommends these rules, especially for beginning wine drinkers:
#1 Drink what you like.
“If you are interested in wine and want to get more involved, just start drinking and drink what you like,” Minden said. He suggested starting with what you know and building from there. As you taste more wine and pair it with different foods, your palate will become more discriminating.
#2 Taste the rainbow.
Minden advised, “Think of the rainbows of wine.” Begin with white wine, move towards rose and then into reds. The taste will get dryer as you move along the spectrum.
#3 Consider the preparation.
When choosing which wine to drink with your meal, consider how the meal was prepared. A light meal, such as tilapia, will work better with a lighter wine, but a heavier lobster dipped in butter sauce would require a dryer wine. Fat content, sauces and seasonings help determine what the right wine is for the dish.
#4 Think through the courses.
A cheese appetizer would taste better with a red wine, but a white wine would better compliment the chicken main dish. From the outset, consider each course and look for a wine that goes accordingly. Often a variety of wines served throughout the meal would be a better solution than one wine that might compliment the main course, but overpower the appetizer.
#5 Ask around.
To better understand what the perfect wine choice may be, Minden suggested seeking advice from someone you trust. “Go some place that has someone who knows a bit. I spend half my day talking with customers and having conversations with them. In a restaurant, try the wait staff or ask them to ask the chef in back.” As Minden pointed out, the restaurant wants you to enjoy your meal and come back to visit them, so they can offer good pairing suggestions to please your palate.
As for the specifics, the following is a guide that Minden suggested when choosing the appropriate pairing:
Seafood
Referring back to the rainbow of wines, food also has its own rainbow. For fish alone, there is the lighter tilapia on one end of the scale and an oiler salmon steak on the other end.
“I always like to start at the lighter side and work forward for the fish,” Minden said. “For the light, flakey fish, you need a white wine. When serving, you often put on some lemon or lime juice, so you are looking for a wine with a high acidity like a Sauvignon Blanc. Salmon is orange colored and richer. Therefore you want something that has more richness. Salmon being down the line, you could go with a red.”
As for crustaceans, Minden recommended a Chardonnay to match up with the butter sauce that is often served with the meal.
Chicken
Chicken is a lighter meat with a lower fat content, making it a good fit with a white wine. But, if the meal is prepared with a heavy or highly acidic sauce, such as chicken parmesan, moving more towards a red wine would better compliment the dish.
Ham and turkey
Ham and turkey are in the middle of the food spectrum, meaning that either reds or whites could be matched with them, according to preference. Generally speaking, Minden said a Pinot Noir is a good match since it is a lighter red wine.
Read meat
Red meat has a higher fat content than other meats, meaning a heavier, dryer wine such as a Napa Valley Cabernet is typically a good choice.
“The fat coats your tongue. Since your tongue has the fat on it, the dryness of the wine lightens up and you can taste more of the fruit of the wine and not the dryness of the finish,” Minden explained. “Anything that has a lot of fat content in it will match well with a red wine. Any heavy red meat goes well with dry wine.”
Pasta
As Minden said, the higher the fat content of a food, the better to pair it with a dry, red wine. With pasta, consider the type of sauce. A buttery sauce would go best with a dryer wine, as does a red sauce because of its high acidity.
Cheese
When choosing what to serve with cheese, “The heavier, bolder or richer the flavor of a cheese, the dryer the wine is you can put with it.”
While Brie has a lighter flavor to it, a stronger parmesan would go best with a Chianti or red wine.
Dessert
Desserts can run the spectrum from sweet to heavy and fatty. For chocolate, red wine is a good bet due to the fat content. For something sweet but not as fatty, a dessert wine such as a Riesling would work well.
Often becoming a more discriminating wine drinker is a process of trial and error. Take some time to taste different varieties in different settings with various foods. After a while, you might amaze yourself and your dinner party at what a wine connoisseur you have become.
