Wine and Wine pairing Tips

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Two principles that can help in matching wine with food:  Complimentary Principle and Contrast Principle. 

The complimentary principle involves choosing a wine that is similar in some ways to the dish you are preparing. Think about the flavors in a dish the same way you think about flavors in wine – as types, or families. If a dish has mushrooms, that’s an earthy flavor.; if it has citrus or elements of fruit, that’s a fruity flavor (and so on). Then consider which wines would offer their own earthy flavor, fruity flavor, herbal flavor, spicy flavor, or whatever. 

Most people use complimentary principles without realizing it. They choose a light-bodied wine to go with a light dish and a full-bodied wine to go with a heavy dish. 

The contrast principle seeks to found flavors in a wine that are not in a dish but that would enhance it. A dish of fish or chicken in a rich cream and butter sauce, for example, might be matched with a white wine whose uplifting and high acidity would counterbalance the heaviness of a dish. A dish with earthy flavors such as Portobello mushrooms and fresh flava beans (or potatoes and black truffles) might contrast nicely with a pure fruit flavor on a Riesling. The contrast principle is usually applied when simple food is served, like unadorned lamb chop or hard cheese and bread, with a gloriously complex aged wine. For this week’s offering, here is what I recommend. Remember also, sometime the wine you really love goes with anything

 Two very complicated rules of wine tasting. Although you drink beverages every day, tasting them as they pass through your mouth, wine is a special case. Wine is much more complex that other beverages. 

Wine people believe wine is so complex that it deserves to be looked at and smelled before it is even tasted ( forgive me, I never made this rules).

One this is for sure: The more slowly and attentively you taste wine, the more interesting it tastes. If you gulp wine quickly, the way you do soda pop, you'll only get ten percent of the wine's flavor.

And with that, we have two of the fundamental rules of wine tasting:

1: Slow down

2: pay attention

• Smelling Wine 
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•  Tips on Burgundy