Top 8 Simple and Easy Wine Pairing Tips For Beginners
Are you struggling to pair the right wine with your red velvet cake? Or do you find it painstaking to pair the wine with your BBQ night? Or you are not sure which wine to tag along for your Sunday brunch? People find wine pairing hard almost every time they plan a get-together.
When it comes to wine pairing, there are two things you can do:
Congruent Pairing – Pair a wine that enhances the taste of your dish, for example, sweet wine with dessert.
Complementary Pairing – Pair a wine that complements your dish, for example, red wine and steak.
Easy, right?
Key Points to Remember
- Light food and white wines make the perfect combination like seafood or green vegetables.
- Red wine has high tannins, so it can be paired with protein-rich foods.
- Dry red wine and chocolate are not a good combination and are certainly hard to pull.
Food and wine pairing is not rocket science but is certainly slightly hard to pull, especially if you do not have a proper understanding of wine. Thus, we are sharing a few tips on wine pairing that will act as a guide for you to get started.
Let’s dive in!
8 Simple And Easy Wine Pairing Tips For Beginners
1. The Balance of Flavor Intensity
The intensity of the flavors plays a major role, so you need to have the perfect balance of food and wine, so that one taste does not negate the other. A bold and flavored wine should be complemented with a rich and flavorful dish, while a mild and light wine should be paired with a delicately-flavored dish.
Boldly flavored red meats like steak complement rich and delicious red wine like Zinfandel. Or light and refreshing white wine with low or medium-intensity meats like fish is another combination worth trying—a perfect flavor intensity pairing will make a fine-dining experience.
2. Match Food and Wine’s Weight
We are not talking about pounds. Similar weights mean matching food weight with wine, which means the lighter the food, the lighter should be the wine. For example, pair white wine with mild and refreshing food like fish and poultry.
Remember, you should not confuse weight with intensity. For example, a light sauce spaghetti is light in intensity but heavy in weight. So, pair light meals with light and mild wine, while heavy and full-potion meals like red meat and cheese casserole with bold and rich-flavored wine like Cabernet Sauvignon.
It is important to pair the wine with weight rather than a color like you can pair a chardonnay with rich and flavored foods.
3. Think About Wine Acidity for Fried Foods
Pair high-acid wines, like Sauvignon Blanc, with fried foods that are deep-fried not tossed in oil. It works because high acid wines can cleanse the palate when eating fatty and fried foods like rich and buttery sauces.
A perfect combination can be achieved with Zinfandel: a full-bodied and perfectly balanced wine from Sonoma County, which is a perfect match for Indian curries and buttery sauces.
The acid trims the fat and adds flavor to your mouth that complements your dining. Moreover, acid wines like Young Riesling add richness to your food, enhancing the flavor of both wine and the dish in your mouth.
Wines that are produced in cold climates have more acidity as compared to hot climate wines.
4. Stop Combining Salt and Tannins
Salty foods are well-balanced with light wines. Wines with mild sweetness enhance the flavor. But mixing wines rich in high tannins with salty foods will mess up the combination, making wine a bit harsh and feeling bitter and dry in your mouth.
Avoid enormous, bold reds like cabernet sauvignon. Another reason why mixing salt and tannins is a big blunder is that they both produce the same effect on your mouth—making your gums and mouth bitey.
Pair a light and refreshing wine with salty food so you get a heavenly taste that makes you feel refreshed and crave for the next bite.
5. Focus on Sauce Than Meat
For a rich and delightful flavor, it is important to focus on sauce and not meat. If the wine overshadows the intensity and acidity of the sauce, it will make it taste flavorless.
So, if you are serving chicken prepared with tomato sauce, pair it with wine that has high acidity to match the richness of the sauce.
A full-bodied Zinfandel is a perfect match for tomato sauce, as it will beautifully match the intensity and acidity. Or you can use citrus sauce or cream sauces and pair it with Chardonnay to get the delightful and balanced taste in your mouth.
6. Sweet Wines for Spicy Foods
Sweet wines are a big relief for spicy foods. But full-bodied red wines that are rich in high alcohol and tannins are not ideal for spicy foods because the high levels of tannins and alcohol will increase the intensity when they combine with spice.
So, for sweet wine, white wines like Riesling are a perfect choice as they are refreshing, light, and fruity. The sugar in the white wines complements your spicy food and balances it perfectly.
7. Wine With Right Chocolate Dessert
One thing that can make even the experienced wine aficionado pull off their hair is pairing wines with the right dessert—which is extremely challenging. A chocolate dessert with dry wine will never go right as chocolates have a few sensations like tannin, sweetness, and fattiness to your palate. So when you pair it with dry red wine, you are left with a bitter and sour taste.
You need to pair rich or sweet wine with your chocolate dessert so it leaves a fruity and flavored taste, which will enhance the combination of wine and dessert. Berry wines like Zinfandel can pair perfectly with chocolate desserts like truffle.
Chocolate dessert like dark chocolate when paired with sweet wine balances the sharpness of the chocolate impeccably.
8. Tannins With Protein-Rich Food
Red wines have tannins. The easiest way to recognize whether or not your wine has tannins is through the dry and puckering sensation or taste it leaves in the mouth. Pairing tannic wines with spicy or even sweet dishes will clash with the flavors, leaving your mouth with an unpleasant taste.
High-tannin wines are often difficult to pair with food, which is why protein-based food such as cheese or meat is the perfect combination. The protein-rich food when paired with red tannins brings out fruitier and enjoyable characteristics. Moreover, the tannic wine cleanses your palate between bites.
A full-flavored red wine will taste lovely with rich and properly cooked red meat like steak or lamb.
Wrapping Up
The good old rule of pairing red with red and white with white is restrictive in so many ways that it should be stopped right away. The goal of pairing wine with food means it should be complementing in nature, making the mouth feel heavenly when you take the first sip right after your first bite.
Remember, great wines always complement food, but only when both of them match the intensity, flavor, and acidity. Anything else might give a pungent flavor, making the beginners never dream of drinking wine again. So, try out the above wine pairing tips now to commence and enhance your wine-tasting journey.
