Eight tenets of great wine and food pairing

How to be a sommelier at home

The old rule of white wine with fish and red wine with meat doesn’t apply across the board. Now it’s fine – probably always has been – to have a light red wine like a Pinot Noir or a Gamay with salmon, and many white wine drinkers still only drink Chardonnay, regardless of what they are eating, even if it’s a steak.

You cannot ruin a meal if you choose a wine you like. However, carefully selecting wines to pair perfectly with the food you serve enhances the flavours within both. Artful wine pairing is how you can change a good meal into an extraordinary dining experience. We spoke to a sommelier and an executive chef to get their take on choosing the perfect wine for different dishes.

What a sommelier considers
Balance flavour intensity: that means pairing light-bodied wines with lighter flavoured food and fuller-bodied wines with heartier, richer and oilier dishes. A Pinot Noir can be great with fish because you are matching light to light. A full-bodied, heavier wine will overpower a light, delicate dish, while a lighter, delicate wine hardly registers if you sip it with a hearty roast.  Here are eight aspects to consider when selecting wines.

(4 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Pages: 1 2 3 4