The 6 Basics to Food and Wine Pairing
I was half asleep in the morning in a dark Michael Mina Restaurant until Chef Mike boomed in his signature snide-but-charismatic voice,
“Cooking is simply a balance of fat, acid, salt and sweet.”
At the time, I was not a glorious writer of hedonism (aka wine), but part of the service staff gleaning knowledge on how to sell food. What Mina touched on struck a chord and helped me to isolate what I need to go about constructing a food and wine pairing. The basics of flavor-matching are actually quite simple (although not always easy to pull off). These are the 6 basic profiles to work with when thinking about matching food and wine:
Acidity in wine pairs well with fatty and sweet foods.
Fatty foods need either an acidic or high alcohol wine, otherwise the wine will taste flabby.
Bitter (aka Tannic) wine can be balanced with a sweet food.
Salty shouldn’t compete with acidity in wine. Use sparingly as necessary to keep sharpness in the meal.
Sweet food/wine benefits from a little acidity.
Alcohol can be used to cut through fatty foods or balance a sweet dish.