Thematic Wine Pairing
Are you unsure which wine to serve with which foods? Generally, you should serve food and wine that share a likeness with one another. Whether it is an ethnic likeness, a color likeness, or a texture and body likeness, your wine and your food should complement one another.
Typically, tomato Italian dishes or beef with Italian herb dishes call for Italian red wines and creamy Italian dishes and Italian vegetable dishes call for Italian white wines. People in Italy have been making wine for as long as people have populated Italy, and they have developed their wines around their foods so pairing Italian foods with Italian wines is a natural match.
To some degree, the French can say the same about their wines. However, the French not only developed their wines around their fabulous foods, they also developed wines for sipping and enjoying without foods. At any rate, you would be safe to purchase French wines for any French dish that you prepare, again, matching lighter foods with whites and heavier foods with reds.
Whether you are serving Italian food, French food, other meat dishes, vegetarian dishes or cheese, you can find the perfect balance for your meal if you select the proper wine to accompany it. You can even select the perfect dessert wine either to have as dessert or to accompany your dessert.
If you are serving, say, grilled Salmon, you have a few choices for types of wine that will suit. You could go with traditional wisdom and select a white wine for your fish dinner, which would preferably be a buttery wine such as a Chardonnay. On the other hand, because Salmon is one of the densest, heaviest flavored fish, you could also do quite well with a lighter red wine such as a Pinot Noir. People who prefer red wines to white wines often prefer Pinot Noir with Salmon to a white wine.
Perhaps you are serving Chinese food. Unlike France and Italy, the Chinese did not develop their food around wine drinking. Typically, though, if you do not wish to match your Chinese food with the ethnic rice wine, Sake, you would want to follow the same guidelines for choosing wine for Chinese food as you do other foods. If you are cooking beef stir-fry, match the beef with a light red wine. If you are preparing seafood sushi, choose a light white wine such as a Chenin Blanc to match the seafood.
You can pair lighter foods such as quiche with Pinot Grigio for a summer afternoon luncheon and you can pair heavy beef stews for a winter evening meal with a stout Shiraz. You can even pair your favorite chocolate desserts with an array of wines. Lighter milk chocolates complement fruity white wines and dark chocolate desserts complement big dry reds like Cabernet Sauvignon.
You can also pair wine and cheese in several ways. While this is an extensive topic on its own, a few good matches are sharp cheddar with Cabernet Sauvignon or Swiss or Gruyere with Pinot Noir. Blue cheeses go well with sweet whites like Sauternes and soft rich creamy cheeses like brie pair well with buttery Chardonnays.
Ian Love is the boss of Australian wine shop - Liquor Merchants, and owns top Perth restaurant Coco’s. He runs a great wine club in Perth.
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