Food and wine pairings: how to successfully combine flavors?

 From the bottle, to choosing the right one. This is the secret to creating the best food and wine pairings. But how do you know which flavors to pair? Here are some simple tips to apply to enhance the marriages, from the glass to the plate.

The basics

To start, let's go back to the basics: a good food and wine pairing enhances both the dish and the wine in question. The idea is to create the perfect balance, without one overpowering the other.

There are three factors to consider:

• Aroma: To achieve balance, aromas must be concordant. It is not necessarily a question of combining the same flavors but similar characteristics.
• Texture: because we seek harmony of the senses, a successful agreement is revealed in particular by the feel in the mouth.
• Intensity: playing on contrasts is one thing, but you still have to remain subtle to avoid making a faux pas.

The Golden Rules

A good food and wine pairing, its golden rules.

The color

Although the concept is rather surprising, it works very well! Pairing a dish and a wine of the same color literally works wonders, like the duo of stew/red wine or cheese/white wine.

The region

 

It is called the regional agreement. For an explosive agreement in the mouth, nothing beats a local specialty associated with a local wine. For example: sea bass ceviche and Gris blanc.

The finesse

 

Here, finesse implies the delicacy of a dish. For elegant dishes, we therefore prefer a refined wine. For example: asparagus velouté and Domaine de l'Estagnère Orange.

The power

In other words: for a light dish, a light wine and for a full-bodied dish, a powerful wine. To reveal a meat such as Cathar lamb, Cigalus rouge is the perfect contender!

The hierarchy

If you have to serve several wines, move up the range throughout the meal, starting from the lightest to the most complex. Ideally, serve the best wine with the main course.

What you need to remember

While some pairings are obvious, the concept of pairing remains quite complex. Each wine is characterized by an origin and maturity, while a dish can have very different nuances depending on how it is prepared.

In fact, there are always exceptions, just as there are a whole range of possibilities depending on tastes and colours.

So, if there is one rule to remember, it is this: please yourself above all.

Our other blog articles to help you become an expert :

How to taste a wine: the steps to follow

Choosing a good wine in 5 steps

Which wine is right for you?

@MarieOrmieres