How to Match Wine With Food

Most of the conventional edicts about what kind of wine to serve with different foods are wrong. Go with your instincts and choose what tastes good to you. These tips from the author of "Red Wine With Fish" will help.

Instructions

1. Evaluate a wine in the context of the food. Think about what will go well with the dishes you're planning to serve.

2. If you're not familiar with a wine, evaluate it on the basis of the four tastes on your palate: sweet, sour, bitter and salt.

3. In general, match sweet foods with slightly sweet wines (the food will make the wine seem less sweet). Pair sour, acidic foods with acidic wines (same principle - the sourness will make the wine less acidic), and bitter foods with wine that's a little bitter (from tannins). Serve acidic, non-oaky wines with salty foods to cut the salt.

4. Ignore conventional wisdom on what goes with what, and even ignore grape variety, as one chardonnay, for example, can differ widely from another, ranging from delicate to assertive. Taste the wine before you serve it, and try to learn about specific wines and producers, not just varieties. Ask a wine merchant or sommelier (wine steward at a restaurant) for advice.

Tips & Warnings

• Young red wines have the most tannins.

• "Oaky" wine is wine that has been stored in oak barrels; many wines are stored this way currently. Excessive oakiness doesn't go well with food.

• All wines come from fruit, of course, but some wines, especially young ones, have an especially "fruity" taste - think fruity punch. Avoid excessively "fruity" white wines with food, as the fruitiness can distract from the food. Young white wines, especially from North America, can be very fruity. Fruitiness in some red wines, though, can alleviate the bitterness caused by too much tannin, improving the wine for food. So a fruity young red wine might be a good bet. "Fruitiness" diminishes as a wine ages.

• You can drink red wine with fish. Think about tastes, not color.