wine lists?

[Randy Caparoso]

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).]