Learn the Art & Science of Wine and Food Pairing
To master pairing wine and food seems like a daunting task. After all, it is a practice that sommeliers are trained on judiciously during intense wine education and sommelier exams.
However, really any food and wine lover can learn to do it. It takes just a little practice and the time to learn a few basic techniques and theories. After which, you’re on your way to experiment on your own and impress at any gathering with delicious pairings (or be that person that notes when a pairing isn’t really up to snuff).
While we have written in the past on pairing foods, like about cheese and wine pairings, sweet wine food pairings, Thanksgiving meal food pairings, Holiday feast pairings, and wine pairing with traditional Hannukah foods, there are many different schools of thought about how and when to think about pairing wine with food. In this article we get down to basics and simplify the art of food and wine pairing, explaining the foundational concepts so that you can go out and start to create your own pairings. While it’s normal to have your usual go-to wine, we encourage you to poke through and try different flavors that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of for an interesting taste experience.
An example of an Italian Sommelier’s wine and food pairing chart, used to help visualize the theory behind crafting a harmonious pairing following the AIS methodology.
The Vero team includes sommeliers that are trained in Italy by the Association of Italian Sommeliers (AIS), including two women on our team, founder Sheila Donohue and Jacqueline Mitchell. In this article we focus mainly on AIS’s pairing theory and methodology which was designed in, arguably, the wine and food mecca of the world. Created during the 1980s and 90s, the methodology hones in on the interactions of flavors and sensations created by food and wine for an overall harmonious experience. A large part of the AIS methodologyfocuses on learning pairing by utilizing a specific wine and food pairing chart (like the one pictured here) to help visualize the complementing and constrating (respectively on axises and diagonals) aspects of a wine and a food.
But it doesn’t have to be that complicated. Read this extensive guide to help you master the foundations and give you the tools you need to build your own pairings. It is important to consider, first and foremost, the basic building blocks of a particular food or dish, as well as the mirrored characteristics in a wine.
Despite having this this methodology, there is (almost) no right or wrong in food pairings… after all, we all have different palates and experiences which influences what we like and don’t like in food, wine and everything we taste. This is why we consider wine and food pairing both an art and a science. Plus pairing foods makes for a fun and tasty exercise to do with others.
So what are these building blocks to look out for and consider?
Food Pairing Terminology
In general, with wine pairing foods, you need to be attuned to both the flavors as well as the mouthfeel of a dish, considering not just the main part of the dish but also all of the additions to it, like sauces, oils, spices, etc, basically all the factors that influence one’s own palate’s interpretation of a dish. Today we will look at a total of 11 different factors, however, remember that not all factors will be represented in all dishes.
Let’s start off with the three factors that will always be present and must be considered: Persistency, succulence, and aromatic intensity. Persistence follows the same track as finish in a wine. Here, we want to consider how long the flavor of the food lasts: does it disappear right away, or linger on our palate? Succulence in food is present in things like the natural juices present in the food (think like a juicy steak), but it can also be created by things like saliva production caused by an overly sour food or even a food that requires abundant chewing. Aromatic intensity in food is comparable to intensity in wine: how much do you sense the flavors? Are they super obvious and flavorful, or are they subtle and hidden?
A classic pairing, Barolo and Bollito (with winemaker Aldo Clerico). A fatty and succulent dish, bollito goes great with tannic red wines.
We can consider the next two terms together: oiliness and fattiness. Both come from fats present in a dish, but the main difference comes from the consistency. This is an example of where mouthfeel comes into play. As a general rule of thumb, oiliness is slippery, and liquid, where fattiness is more creamy, thick, and perhaps coats your mouth more. Think like a spoon of olive oil versus a pat of butter.
Looking at sweetness or a sweet tendency, we may think initially they are the same, however they are not. Sweetness comes directly from sugar, like in a dessert, whereas a sweet tendency is present in many foods inherently as glucose. Many savory foods may have a sweet tendency without being overtly ‘sweet’, for example think a simple white fish, or boiled carrots. While not ‘sweet’, they have a sweet flavor undertone; this sweet undertone is what we call the sweet tendency. Think of it this way: sweet is from added sugars (such as honey, white sugar, molasses, maple syrup, etc.), while a sweet tendency is from the natural sugars present within an ingredient (such as from starches).
Lastly we look at bitterness, acidity (or sourness), and spices. These vary wildly depending on the dish, and sometimes might not be present at all. For bitterness think of artichokes or dark caramel. Acidity presents itself in dishes finished with lemon juice or vinegars. And for spices, while it does include ‘spicy’ like cayenne, it also includes things like maybe Indian dishes that are heavily spiced with strong flavors like garam masala, turmeric, or curry.
Today we will not be talking about pairing with umami, as we have done so in the past. Check out our previous article on umami in wine and pairings to recap.
Now, let’s review some of the corresponding terminology for describing wine for pairing with food.
Wine Pairing Terminology
For wine terms, some of them we have covered in previous articles, like acidity, effervescence (bubbles), or sweetness. Other terms are well familiar and recognizable to wine lovers. These can be things like:
intensity (how strong the aromas and flavors are);
finish (also sometimes called persistence) referring to how long the wine’s flavors linger on your palate;
tannins, the sandy-like roughness you might feel on your tongue or cheeks which most often is experienced when drinking red wine. This is an aspect really only present for red wine pairings and not with white wine pairings;
the softness of the wine, more commonly called body or roundness, too, which refers to how much the wine fills and envelops your mouth;
the sapidity of the wine, sometimes referred to as minerality. It is the savory characteristic that some wines present. To understand better, think of the extreme end of the sapidity spectrum where it feels like you are licking a rock or chalk or actually taste salt;
Lastly, an important valuation is to think for a moment about the heat present from the alcohol. While not necessarily actual ‘heat’, alcohol present in wine can cause a warming sensation or even a drying astrigent sensation in the mouth that will interact with certain foods.
Now we have identified 11 food characteristics along with 9 wine terms. The magic in pairing is guessing how all of these aspects will work together and what new flavors they will create when mixed. There are two theories behind how to match up these terms: that of complementing and that of contrasting.
Barbera is a food friendly wine, great for pairing with rich pasta dishes like this mushroom sugo.
The Intersection of Complementing and Constrasting Harmonies
Now, as you may remember from our article ‘5 Tips for Wine and Cheese Pairings’ we touched on the basic concepts of complementing and contrasting pairings in our first tip of the article: “the peppery flavors of a Schioppettino from Friuli would complement a cheese flavored with black pepper. However, contrasting flavors can also work just as well, and in some cases even better. For example, with… cheddar cheese, a fresh, acidic wine might do just as well, because the acidity of the wine counterbalances and cuts through the fattiness of the cheese, leaving a cleaner palate.”
When melding together the above food and wine characteristics, which work better together in a complementing pairing, and which in a contrasting pairing?
Complementing Pairings
One of the most important complementing pairings (alluded to in tip number two of our cheese pairings), is that of matching intensity between a food and wine. You don’t want one to ‘win’, so it is important to consider how strong their flavors are. With wine, this is simple intensity, but with food, we can look for intensity in two ways: through the spices or aromatics. Both options can add extra flavor to a dish that can either help balance with the wine, or overpower it depending on a wine’s intensity.
Another important valuation to pair via complementation, is that of persistance or finish.
Think about it… much like intensity, you want your food and wine to have a similar persistence of flavor, where, when all is said and done, you are left with a clean palate and no extra lingering flavors; otherwise you are left with only the flavor of that which remains, be it food or wine, as your memory of the pairing and this end result is considered a faulty food and wine pairing.
This can be tied in sometimes to intensity. For example, it is more likely a high intensity food or wine will be persistent on your palate, however it is nearly impossible to define a wine or food as ‘persistent’ if it has no intensity. For intensity pairing, seek out wine and foods that linger for a similar amount of time in your mouth.
Lastly, sweetness (true sweetness, not a sweet tendency) lends itself well to complementing pairings. Sugar attracts sugar, so for some pairings, like a sweet dessert, try looking for a sweet wine with some residual sugar. Be careful, however, to pick a wine that also has some acidity or sapidity, to avoid a cloying effect.
Contrasting Pairings
The concept behind contrasting pairings is that of ‘cleansing’ the palate; using a contrasting flavor or sensation to temper a flavor or sensation present in the other. A common contrasting food and wine pairing is contrasting succulence with tannins and alcohol (think juicy steak and big red wine): the tannins and alcohol help to dry the succulent juices of the steak, preventing you from experiencing an overproduction of saliva that washes flavors away. The same theory goes for oiliness: contrast it with tannins or alcohol to help soak up the ‘greasiness’ from the oily fats.
When we look at fattiness (like a creamy baccalà, or fried foods), here there is nothing better than effervescence. The lively bubbles (and the fact that usually these wines have a healthy dose of acidity as well, another factor that contrast pairs well with fattiness) cut through the grease and fat to almost cleanse the palate and help prepare it for the next bite.
Other contrasting pairings can be based around the body of a wine as well. To contrast body, look for food similar sapidity and acidity. Or, if you find yourself with a food that has a bitter tendency, look for a full bodied wine too. The characteristics of sapidity and acidity work well with body as they help ‘dilute’ a full bodied wine; the flavors help cut through the enveloping soft feeling of the wine, helping (much like with fattiness and oiliness) to prep your palate for another bite.
Lastly, we have our sweet tendency. For foods that have a lot of sweet tendency (like tomatoes maybe), look for a wine with a fresh and lively acidity. The acidity balances with the sweet tendency of the food to help a dish not become overly sweet, or a sweet tendency dish to help rein in a wine with a lot of acidity. This is because the two work to almost cancel each other out, creating a great option for a contrasting pairing.
This is a fantastic pairing: Febo Rolland Pecorino with burrata cheese with black truffles & EVOO
Adjusting Dishes to Create a Pairing
Now comes one of the most fun parts of the art of food and wine pairings… crafting one! It is rare that foods are mono-ingredient… we rarely pair a wine with a carrot stick or a piece of undressed pasta. Foods are served together, blended and cooked to create new flavors, different than the singular ingredients. For this reason, think about how adding different ingredients to a dish or a bite can enhance or detract from a pairing.
Take the classic example of bread or crackers and cheese. The flour and starches present in the bread add an extra boost of sweet tendency to a cheese that maybe before was super sapid, allowing for a more fresh acidic wine to pair well. Or, add some extra virgin olive oil to your bread, to add some oiliness and aromatic flavor to the bread to allow for pairing a more intense wine with some tannins. Founder Sheila Donohue recently experienced this when pairing a burrata cheese with the intense and long finished Rolland Pecorino orange wine from the Febo family in Abruzzo. While the wine would have easily overpowered the mild cheese, by adding some black truffle sauce to the burrata, it gave a much more intense flavor that allowed the cheese to pair with more complex whites or high acid reds. Plus she poured some of Febo’s organic extra virgin olive oil over the cheese which added another dimension of flavor and texture to the cheese and whose viscosity was paired in a contrasting manner with the acidity in this orange wine.
So think as you build a dish or a menu, are there garnishes or extra flavors or sauces that can be added (or even taken away as a further way to accomodate a wine) to modify the acidity, sweet tendency, fattiness, oiliness?
How to Taste for a Pairing
Now, let’s take a quick look at how a sommelier will evaluate a pairing. While this may be how professionals do it, don’t feel the need to always follow every step. For casual pairings, start off with step three.
1. To start, first take a sip of wine, thinking about your building blocks. Let the finish fade.
2. Take a bite of food, making sure to get a small taste of all the dishes components (sauces, garnishes etc). Again, consider all of the building blocks. Take a moment to consider how these blocks will be interacting, be it by contrasting or complementing. Now, it is time for the final test: putting the two together.
3. When evaluating a food and wine pairing, first take a bite of the food and chew carefully and thoughtfully before swallowing completely. Then, before the food ‘finish’ fades, take a sip of wine.
4. Note the effects of the two blending: is there one flavor that is dominating the other? Are there previously unnoticed flavors coming out? What is the final flavor in your mouth: food, wine, or neither?
The last question is a large part of what determines a ‘perfect’ harmonious pairing: there should be neither food nor wine standing out as the final flavor in your mouth. However, this is to say, a ‘correct’ pairing does not necessarily need to finish harmoniously. A ‘correct’ pairing is the pairing you enjoy, and a pairing not 100% perfectly matched can still be enjoyable, delicious, and amazing.
Classic Wine and Food Pairing Examples and Explanations
Now you’ve got your foundations, and it is time to decide on your wine pairing with… what food? To get you started, here are a few suggestions of some classic food and wine pairings that work very well together. We want to keep this brief, just to give an example or two of ideal pairings, after all, the point of this article is to give you the foundation to start to create your own pairings! But still, a few suggestions are indeed warranted. In addition to the list below, we have previously compiled a few themed pairing lists you can find in previous articles. These are: cheese and wine parings, sweet wine pairings, Thanksgiving pairings, Holiday pairings, and Hannukah pairings.
Barolo and Filetto: The juicy medium rare beef filet is filled with succulence, and the developed tannins in an aged red wine along with a warm presence of alcohol will balance each other out, with the tannins drying the sauce and juice of the dish and this sauce helping to lubricate the drying or sandy effect of the tannins.
A classic pairing: Prosecco Brut and Pumpkin Risotto.
Sauvignon Blanc Klassik and a Pasta Primavera: A bright, acidic, and sapid wine with a lot of intensity, needs a dish that has a lot of aromatics and a large amount of sweet tendency. Enter a primavera sauce… comprised of vegetables (especially ones that that lean towards having sweet tendencies such as peas, carrots, bell peppers, or zucchini), with a lot of different flavors and this sweet tendency help to balance the Sauvignon Blanc.
La Maliosa Saturnia Bianco Orange Wine and Acqua Cotta: Orange wines are unique from their white wine cousins in that the extended lee contact leaves a little bit of tannin in the finished product. In fact, La Maliosa’s Orange Wine was cited by the Culinary Institute of America as a wine made for difficult food pairings, meaning that it pairs with anything! Try it with a range of dishes, for example, a soup like the traditional Tuscan Acqua Cotta, or a even a dessert, like creme caramel. The tannins balance the natural succulence of the liquid soup, and the sweet tendency from the bread and vegetables balance the acidity in the wine. This pairing offers another overlooked example as well: eggs may be difficult to pair with sometimes due to their unique combination of aromatics, fattiness, and persistency. However, orange wines like the Saturnia Bianco are often very food friendly and a great option as they bring as well a different set of intensity and profume to the table.
Prosecco Brut and Pumpkin Risotto: Risotto is a creamy dish, especially when made with something like pumpkin that has a natural sweet tendency. With the fattiness and oiliness coming from the butter and melted cheeses and the sweet tendency of the pumpkin a sparkling wine like Prosecco fits well here. The bubbles help cut the fattiness and the acidity helps balance the sweet pumpkin for a surpisingly harmonious pairing.
Picolit and Foie Gras: One might not think to pair a sweet dessert wine with a savory item, but the botryized Picolit is intense, persistant, and sweet. Round and soft as well with a high alcohol, this wine is a lot and it needs something special. Like foie gras: with a unique aromatic profile, a persistant flavor, and, obviously, a lot of fattiness, it pairs well with Picolit thanks as well to the acidity left over in this sweet wine.
Time to Invent Your Own Pairings
As we have always hinted at in all of our food and wine pairing articles, the best way to pair is to find what you like: that means to experiment and try different options: find that perfect combo that makes your eyes go wide with a ‘Wow!’ If you would like to start off using our suggested pairings above, go right ahead, but you will find your own palate even more by testing different combos, options, and pairings.
Get ready to pair at your next event or get together!
While picking out a dish to pair with a certain wine, or a wine to go with a certain dish is certainly a fun exercise, one of our favorite things to do is to evaluate the ‘harmony’ of any pairing you come across… think about the oiliness, or the sweet tendency and consider how that interacts with the full body of the wine in front of you. Pairing is not only about picking wines and foods to go together, but also playing and seeing what works and what doesn’t. And last but not least, remember to savor what you eat and drink. In savoring each bite and swallow, you get more enjoyment of the the food and wine experience while also moderating your intake. This practice also fits into a more healthy lifestyle, as we had covered in this article.
We hope this article can help give you a springboard of knowledge to start your pairing journey… and of course a great place to start that journey is by picking out the wine. For those of you that know our curation style, you know that we love to experiment with different food and wine pairings. And you can too, by trying a selection of different wines and different winegrowers from our portfolio. We sell to both businesses and consumers across the US:
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Let us know in the comments below your favorite pairings!
Find the Wines Mentioned in This Article
Or… Build Your Own Pairing with Schioppettino!
A unique red grape from North Eastern Italy, Schioppettino is fun create red wine pairings with thanks to a beautiful fruit, high acidity, and low tannins. Try it for your next Asian food pairing!
