Food & Wine Pairings

Pairing food and wine can turn out to be an exhausting and frustrating exercise -only if you stick to the rules. The old rules of pairing red wines with red meat and white wine with white meat or fish are quite outdated. As we all know food and wine pairings are highly subjective and unless one has knowledge of the many different varietals and the flavour profile of a particular wine, it is very difficult to orchestrate a pairing.

The problem with these old rules is that they don’t take into consideration the complexity of today’s multi-ethnic food available in cosmopolitan cities like New York, Los Angeles and San Fransisco where you can find Mexican cuisine, South Indian food consisting mostly of vegetables, lentils and yoghurt or Sushi. Not to mention the dozens of new wines that are reaching international markets from Australia, South Africa, Chile, Argentina and even India.

As far as pairings go the most important factor that should be taken into consideration is: Harmony. The wine should not overpower the food nor should the food overpower the wine and both should enhance each others qualities.

In almost every city there are restaurants or small groups that conduct wine tastings or give wine classes. I would definitely join one or the other. It really does open up your world and as you start learning more and meeting more people interested in the same subject you will find the world of wine and food pairings to be less mysterious than it had appeared before.