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- reedr - 03-29-2000
is there a list that shows what wines go along with foods, desserts, or just for casual drinking at dinner parties?
- Innkeeper - 03-29-2000
This site is littered with the remains of people who first tried to answer an innocent question like yours. However, if you are to get an answer, someone has to make the sacrifice. A book like one of the Wine for Dummies books (hyped on an adjacent thread) will teach you characteristics about various wines. Table wine ranges from dry to sweet and comes in red, white, and rose'. Bubbly wines (e.g. Champagne) can be drunk before or during dinner. Fortified wines (e.g. Sherry or Port) can be drunk before or after dinner. As far as what to have with dinner, the bottom line is anything you want. Most folks like dry wine with dinner and the sweet ones with dessert. Table wine also comes in a variety of "bodies" usually referred to as light, medium, or full. Think skim milk, whole milk, heavy cream. Lighter wines go with lighter foods. Richer foods call for more full bodied wines. The basic stuff in wine is a mixture of fruit, acid, tannin, and sometimes sugar. As you can see this includes all the basic tastes except salty. Tannin (results from exposure to skins, seeds, stems, etc) is the bitter component. You need to pay attention to these elements when matching wine to food as well. You don't want to serve a high acid wine with a high acid dish unless you're ready to pucker up.
- Randy Caparoso - 03-30-2000
Well, you are a brave one, Innkeeper. Especially since you were doing well until you got to the last part about serving high acid wine with an acidic dish. You are in error, but please don't take this as my picking on you since this brings out an interesting phenomenon that occurs when wine is served with food.
You see, if you serve a high acid wine such as a German Riesling with a high acid dish such as a salad with a mild vinaigrette, the result is not a puckery sensation, but in fact a cancellation of acidic sensations. Therefore, the vinegar in the salad is more likely to taste LESS acidic, as does the acidity in the wine. That is the reason why it is better to serve fairly crisp wines with dishes with some degree of acidity. If you don't do this and serve a low acid wine with a vinegary dish, what will happen is the dish will taste even more vinegary and sharp, and the wine will taste flat and dull do to relatively low acid. Does this make sense?
Of course, many wine lovers say you should never serve wine with salads, which is just poppycock because they don't know how to pick crisply acidic wines. The fact is, many dishes other than salads -- such as Italian antipasto, Asian style dumplings or dim sum in vinaigrettes, and even simple fish & chips with malt vinegar -- have acidic elements, and taste wonderful with good, crisp whites, pinks, sparklers, and even red wines
So let's take this thinking another step. You can test a related phenomenon of food/wine matching by simply biting into an apple after sipping medium sweet white wine (such as a Chenin Blanc, Muscat or Riesling). After biting into the apple, which is very sweet, medium sweet wine is likely to suddenly taste almost dry. That is the reason why the rule for serving very sweet wines with dessert is that no matter how sweet the wine and how sweet the dessert, the dessert should never actually be sweeter than the wine. Because if the dessert sweeter than a high quality sweet wine, the dessert will make the wine taste less sweet as well as less luscious and fruity in flavor -- a wasted effort.
A third way in which this theory of relative impressions can be tested is when you pair a red wine with, say, a loin of beef. Most red wines are very good with steak because their tannin component (which tastes dry, bitter and/or astringent to the palate) helps absorb the fattier qualities in beef --thereby giving the beef a more savory, less filling taste. However, if you coat the same cut of beef with a cracked peppercorn, you increase the bitter taste in the beef as well. And so when you have a peppery cut of beef, you need red wine with an extra dose of tannin (such as a Cabernet Sauvignon or Syrah) as opposed to a softer tannin red wine (such as a Pinot Noir or Merlot). And when you serve a high tannin wine with peppery steak, the result is not more bitterness or hot pepper flavor, but rather an increased smoothness on the palate. Extra bitterness in the steak is canceled out -- in other words, balanced -- by extra bitterness supplied in a high tannin style red.
So that's a quick lesson on how wine interacts with food. It's a little bit more than the concept of lighter wines with lighter foods, heavier wines with heavy foods, etc., but certainly not complicated once you understand how both basic components in wines and the ingredients in dishes effect the palate. In my mind, if you can understand why you need a certain amount of oil to balance vinegar in a dressing, or why you need vinegary/sweet ketchup to make a hamburger taste juicy rather than fatty, then you certainly can understand how certain wines interact with certain foods.
There are lots of books available in libraries and in the bookstores that discuss exactly these types of things, and in more specific terms. So don't be a lazy-bones and expect all your answers to be found on the net. But if you insist, you can find food/wine hints on sites such as www.wine-lovers-page.com and www.winespectator.com. After that, you're on your own, baby!
[This message has been edited by Randy Caparoso (edited 03-30-2000).]
- Innkeeper - 03-30-2000
OK. Forget about the puckering.
- Scoop - 03-30-2000
Nicely articulated, Randy -- it's a keeper!
Cheers,
Scoop
- Randy Caparoso - 04-01-2000
Thanks, but I'm not really done. I just ran out of energy the other day. On another thread, Bucko talked about matching Alsace grown Gewurztraminer -- known for its "spicy," peppery/lychee-like pefume and flavor -- with Thai food, which is known for its spicy hot, chile pepper derived qualities.
Well, in this case the idea of serving like-with-like (i.e. similarity) -- that is, "spicy" Gewurztraminer with "spicy" Thai food -- is not generally recommended. Why? Because there are other elements in Gewurztraminers that tend to intensify searing sensations of chile pepper to the point of unpleasantness. These elements are the tendency of Alsace grown Gewurztraminers to be high in alcohol (giving a "hot" taste to the palate) and also a little hard in bitter phenolic compounds (basically, tannin). And so when paired with Thai food -- or for that matter, Szechuan, Vietnamese, or Japanese schimchimi spiced foods, all of which are often balanced by sweet/sour components -- the high alcohol and bitter qualities of Gewurztraminer tend to exacerbate, rather than smooth out, chile pepper flavors in foods.
So what does one drink with spicy Asian style food? Water from the hose? No, there are a number of perfectly wonderful wines which offer CONTRASTING qualities that cool off the palate and round out chile charged food spices. What you need are lighter alcohol style whites with slight degrees of sugar such as German Rieslings and French grown Chenin Blanc (bottled as Vouvray). Lower alcohol avoids emphasis of heat, while sugar softens the impact of chile peppers. But hot food wines don't necessarily have to be sweet. Dryer light alcohol whites can also work -- particularly Trocken or Halbtrocken style German Rieslings, Loire Valley grown Sauvignon Blancs (such as Sancerre, Menetou-Salon, Pouilly-Fume and Quincy), Sauvignon Blancs as well as Rieslings from New Zealand, and even Pinot Gris from Oregon or Italy (the latter bottled as Pinot Grigio).
Then there are situations where you dress up fatty meats such as pork ribs, beef and even lamb in hot chile spiced marinades and/or sauces. Red wines go better with fatty meats, and so the thing to do is to alleviate the spicy flavors by selecting red wines that are very low in tannin -- in other words, not so bitter so as not to amplify the heat in the food -- such as Pinot Noir, and wines made from the Gamay grape (French Beaujolais) or the Lemberger from Austria or Washington St.
In summary, when it comes to hot foods, think CONTRAST rather than similarity!
- Thomas - 04-06-2000
To be short (and I am) Randy said many things that are absolutely right on.
One of the reasons I think Rielsing is a most versatile of wines is its great fruit quality to off-set its often high acidity. The salad vinegar discussion illustrates that point.
In general, structure and texture is what I look for to match wine with food. Quite often I pair like with like and quite often I pair contrasting wines with foods, and quite often I am surprised by the results.
The books can help oen to udnerstand why such and such wine either fights or joins with a food, but the palate truly is a unique thing; some people's mouths defy the books....
- mrdutton - 04-11-2000
As regards the above discussion - I guess it is still okay to drink Chianti with Italian food that uses a lot of tomatoes and garlic and the like!?! Acidic wine with acidic food, maybe?
I found an interesting source about matching food with wine. Someone else on this board also recommended the book.
Try taking a look at "The Wine Avenger" by Willie Gluckstern. Check out the web site at www.wineavenger.com.
(Sure hope I don't get shot for this.......) [img]http://www.wines.com/ubb2/smile.gif[/img]
- Bucko - 04-11-2000
The only way to drink some of the highly acidic Italian wines is with an acidic tomato based dish IMHO. Others may disagree, but it works for me, and that is really what it is all about, no? Gotta go with what YOU like.
Bucko
- Thomas - 04-12-2000
True enough, Bucko, but I have had some terrifically fruity southern Italian wines (less acid than in the north) with tomato sauce and met with great success in the pairing; it was in the richness of the fruit coming up against the acidic tomato base.