How to Pair Wine and Dinner for the Perfect Match

When cooking a delicious meal, there’s nothing better to complete the experience and complement the dinner than the perfectly matched wine. There are easily-made mistakes when pairing wine and food that can totally ruin the taste of a meal if the wrong wine is chosen. For example, salt can strip the fruit out of a red wine and make it taste bitter.

Knowing how to correctly pair your wine with your food can greatly intensify the flavours and taste of your food and complete the enjoyment of eating. The flavour in wine comes from certain ingredients – sugar, salt and acid. The main goal you want to achieve from your wine and food pairing is to complement the richness and consistencies of both.

It’s best to try and ensure neither the wine nor the food distracts from one another; you want to be able to enjoy them both equally. Here are some top tips to give you the basics for finding the perfect match between food and wine. 

  1. Sweetness

The sweetness of the food and wine is something to be cautious of. It may feel like a sweet dessert is the most obvious thing to serve up with a sweet wine, but there are certain levels of sweetness to bear in mind. You should try to ensure the wine tastes sweeter than the dessert because you don’t want the dessert to take away the sweetness of the wine, leaving it tasting bitter.

A fruit dessert or one containing a fruit sauce is a light sweetness which will match well with a rich white Chardonnay. A dark chocolate dessert of around 70% matches well with a robust and bitter red wine such as Zinfandel.

  1. Saltiness

 When cooking salty foods, your wine choices are quite limited as salt can completely change the taste of a wine. For example, an oak Chardonnay and a salty dinner is a major no-go; the salt makes the wine taste strange. In addition, pairing highly alcoholic wines with salt will give them a weird bitter taste.

It’s best to try and pair sweet wine with salty food. Sparkling wines are the perfect match for salty foods, especially fried dishes. The carbonation of the sparkling wine combats the salty taste and adds an appealing texture. Often, seafood contains high amounts of salt so keep this in mind. The perfect pairing for seafood dishes like oysters is an acidic wine to help steady the rich ocean flavour.

  1. Acidity

Acid is present in both food and wine. Acidity in food could be the freshly squeezed lemon on fish or a salad dressing that contains a high amount of acid. Acidity in wine gives it a fresh taste and an extra kick. You should try and make sure the acidity of the wine equals or is a tiny bit more than the food. If the wine is less acidic than the food, it will taste weak and flavourless, almost like the food washes the wine out.

The herbal flavourings of a wine such as Sauvignon Blanc will counterbalance an acidic meal containing lemon, vinegar, salad dressing or any other type of highly acidic food. Acid can really add a kick to a bland meal, a great way to impress at a dinner party – just be sure to get the wine right.

Now that you know the foundations of pairing food and wine, you’re ready to begin experimenting properly. Specific meats complement specific wines, so keep this in mind as well as thinking about the flavours of the sauces, sides and dessert. Be sure to serve your wine in the finest glasses such as LSA wine glasses to allow the best wine tasting experience that will satisfy all your senses.

However, it’s important not to forget the most important rule of all – trust your own choices and enjoy.

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