The simple science to Food and Wine pairing!

When you love something you need to take the time to learn about it if you want to get the most out of it and enjoy it at its best. We try to do this with everything we love and share what we have learnt with anyone who is equally interested.

One of the things we love is wine and equally so, we love food! To get the best taste experience from our food and wine we take the wine paring knowledge we have acquired through our Cape Wine Academy courses and put them into practise at every opportunity. 

Here are some simple rules to help you when picking a wine for your meal.

• Sweetness in food -will increase sourness & bitterness in wine, making wine appear less sweet(more dry) and less fruity. You can therefore pair a sweet wine with a sweet dessert because a sweet wine can afford to appear drier. You would not want to pair an already dry, acidic wine with a dessert because appearing even more dry an acidic will make it very harsh and not bring out the best in the wine.

• Foods with high amounts of acidity will decrease the sourness of the wine and will make it taste richer and more mellow. A sweet wine would therefore taste sweeter. You could take a acidic, fresh, crisp wine and allow it to be softened and mellowed. 

Depending on what you are wanting to achieve and on personal taste you can either go the conventional way of matching wine to food by similar strength and acidity ( ie: a sweet dish with a sweet wine, an acidic food with an acidic wine) or you can choose to pair in a unconventional way and decide to match a sweet wine with an acidic food. 

There is no right or wrong. It is just understanding the cause and affect of wine tasting so that you can achieve the desired outcome.

• Bitter, sweet and savoury flavours in food increase bitterness in wine

• Sourness and salty foods suppress the bitterness in wine

• Adding salt to sauces and foods can therefore tone down astringency and bitterness in wine. Salty foods tend to make a sweet wines sweeter

• Savoury increases bitterness in wine and saltiness in conjunction with savoury neutralises the effect because as written above: salty foods suppress bitterness.

The traditional formula:

Red wine with red meat

Dry white wine with white fish and white meat

Sweet wine with dessert or spicy food

But remember you can choose to contrast or complement wine and food equally successfully.