Food & Wine Pairing: Sweetness in Food Rule

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm teaching you the real rules of food and wine pairing. Real rule number two is very important and it's about sweetness, and here it is. Sweetness in food makes sweetness in wine go away. Sweet food will make wine tasteless sweet. In other words, more acidic and a little bit flatter. Now if you have a wine with a little bit of sweetness in it, you pair it up with a food with sweetness in it, that's perfect. So even though it might sound overwhelming, sweet wine and sweet food is perfect, because you know why. The sweet food will make the wine tasteless sweet. Maybe a little bit more balance to you. Now let's look at the correlation of that. A sweet food makes wine tasteless sweet. Here's what we have to remember. Most table wines are dry, meaning they're not sweet. So since most table wines are dry, meaning not sweet, what happens if we pair them up with sweet foods is the fruity flavors go away. In most cases in a table wine, like a Chardonnay or Merlot, or Sauvignon Blanc, if those fruity flavors go away, what's left is things like bitterness and acidity and mineral flavor. That might not be what you had in mind. So it's very important to remember, if you have any sweetness in your food, make sure your wine has a good deal of sweetness, or at least a good deal of fruit forwardness to go along with it. Otherwise your wine will taste flat. That's a very important rule. Rule number two, sweetness in food makes sweetness in wine go away."