Food and Wine Harmony

Wine and Food pairing is an art of matching food dishes with wine to enhance the dining experience. This is one of the most difficult jobs for sommeliers to match perfect wine with a food. Most of the wine critics believe that the most basic characteristic of pairing food and wine understands the balance between the weight, flavor, and texture of food and wine. Rather than following set rules, for example, specific wine goes with particular cuisine or food and white wine with white meat and red wine with red meat. Apart from that, traditional rules, in recent years, scientific method of balancing food and wine is been taken into consideration and it all being evaluated by the sensory analysis. The concept behind matching is that some elements of food and wine reacts opposite to each other and by balancing the elements will make the dining experience more enjoyable.

It is said that, the culture of drinking wine with food is first found in Italy. They rarely dine without wine. Italians used to drink local wines with their cuisine, but the impact of this culture clearly seen on France. French peoples very much influenced by food and wine pairing, as France is been known for their best quality grapes and wines production. They categorized the wine according to their courses of French classical Menu, for example, white wine from Alsace region match with fish preparations and red wine from Bordeaux region pair with red meat. There are few set rules like traditional rule, scientific rule, and sensory experience, to pair wine with food to enhance the dining experience and at the same time to ease the complicacy of pairing food and wine.

Traditional rule of pairing food and wine is very simple and had highly followed by most of the sommeliers in past few years. As the name says traditional rule, it is simple and old. For example, white wine served chilled where as red wine should kept at the room temperature and local wine match with local cuisine. White wine match with white meat and red wine with red meat because red wine generally has tannins and red meat is rich in protein so the contact of protein and tannin will make wine fruitier. One more example of traditional rule of pairing food and wine is simple wine with simple food and complex wine with complex food, like high acidic white wine with smoked salmon. But this rule does not work so well with the complex food preparations, for example, sweet and sour prawns need to match with the wine which should has flavor that will not be empowered by spices, bright acidity and medium to light bodied. Traditional rule of pairing food and wine sometimes seems weaker with the complicated food because it needs to balance the weight, flavor, and texture of both food and wine. The study of balancing food and wine is been done by scientific rule; it is consist of studying about the acidity, flavor, sweetness, and weight of wine in order to match with food. For example, full-bodied high tannin wine match with hard/red meat because of high tannins and protein in meat together will give fruity taste. The acidic wines match with highly fat dishes in order to cut the fat content from the dish and sweet wines match with sweet food like desserts and fruits. For example, late harvested sweet white wine Chenin Blanc, flavored with fruits will match with desserts. Study of these scientific elements of food and wine will enhance the food and wine dining experience and