Some call wine pairing an art; others call it a skill. While some experts and wine lovers have claimed to know the “best” wine to pair with a given dish, Kevin Zraly in his book Windows on the World: The Complete Wine Course, says there is really no “rule.”
“The best wine to pair with your meal is whatever wine you like,” he writes.
In his Bon Appétit article, “Stop Pairing, Start Pouring” Daniel Duane agrees, noting how, for a time, he got carried away with pairing and following advice of so-called experts.
“I stopped buying my favorite Napa and Sonoma wines, produced a mere hour and a half from my home in San Francisco, and drank only what the wine snobs had sanctioned: dry, low-alcohol European wines—French Cahors and first-growth Bordeaux, Italian Aglianico—the kind that can taste reedy and thin by themselves,” he wrote in 2011. “Pretty soon, I couldn't enjoy a drink without either planning a meal or devouring $20 worth of cheese just to make the wine taste right.”
He said that he then realized: “Unlike Europeans, American’s don’t drink wine only with dinner.”
That said, there’s nothing wrong at all with following a few guidelines when truly looking for a good wine and food combination. A little wine-pairing information can take a wine lover a long way when planning a home-cooked meal or a trip to one of Alexandria’s top restaurants. With sommelier expertise in abundance all over town, it’s easy to get a few pointers from the tops in their field.
Or, why not just master some wine pairing basics on your own? Just take it slow and approach it one step at a time.
Where to start? Matt Day, in his article “The Dark Art of Food and Wine Pairing” written for jancisrobinson.com, provides a great launching pad for aspiring food and wine pairing aficionados. He is a previous winner of the Young Wine Writer Award and also has his own Web site.
“Acidity is the key to a good food wine, whose purpose is to cut through the richness of food and cleanse the palate for the next morsel,” he wrote.” “I find that wines very strong in alcohol will overpower nearly all dishes.”
He said he doesn’t see a point in matching a wine above 14.5 percent alcohol, because the “excess alcohol makes it one dimensional.”
So don’t take food and wine pairing so seriously, but tuck away a few little tips and tricks to make sure if you’re enjoying a great meal that you bring together wine and food whose traits complement each other. There’s much more out there, but taking the acid test is definitely a good beginning.
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