Tips and Tricks on How to Pair Wine With Your Meal
Wine pairing is neither rocket science nor a rigid script you must follow while dining. Instead, it's a guideline that allows for exploring and experimenting with different wines you can pair with your meals. You can pair a plate of mushroom sauce with white wine or drink a glass of Pinot Grigio with cheesy pasta. While this defies all the rules of wine pairing, there is no penalty in doing so.
As a staunch wine connoisseur, understanding the wine pairing rules will elevate your dining experience. Let's learn the basics of food and wine pairing to create unique pairings.
Understanding Basic Tastes in Wine Pairing
All wines contain aromatic compounds that react with the fat, protein, and carbohydrate constituents in foods we eat. In essence, wine pairing is a delicate process of combining certain food dishes with wine to elevate your dining experience.
There are over 20 different food tastes, from salty and sour to extreme tastes like umami and electric. When it comes to identifying wines, there are only six flavors: bitter, sweet, acidic, salty, spicy, and fatty. The diverse taste range in wine is then categorized into red, white (including rosé and sparkling), and sweet.
Common Methods of Wine Pairing
While it is always expected to match the wine to the prominent ingredient in the dish, there are other ways to approach wine pairing.
Congruent and contrasting wine pairings are two methods of pairing wine. Congruent wine pairings involve pairing two similar flavors to amplify each other, such as selecting sweet wine for sweet dishes. Contrasting wine pairings involve choosing a different wine that cuts across the flavor of the main dish to create a rich balance. Pairing Chardonnay and creamy pasta is a perfect example of contrasting wine pairing.
5 Rules of Wine and Food Pairing
The best wine pairing is guaranteed to elevate your dining experience. Confused about what wine to pick for your next meal? The following rules can serve as a guideline:
Pair acidic meals with acidic wine of equal acidity level.
Pair fatty foods with red wine.
Pair spicy foods with sweet wines.
Don't serve foods that are much sweeter than wine.
Serve sparkling or acute wine with salty meals.
Contact Bar Enza for More Information
Choosing the right wine type for your menu is a meticulous process that deals less with the price tag and more with a strong foundation in wine pairing. Bar Enza has continually facilitated menu curation over the past few years. Our expertise is rooted in wine and culinary flavor profiles, which allows us to recommend the best wine for your event. Contact us by calling 617-661-5050 today.