Acidity is the ultimate contrast to an array of dishes.
If you are seeking to “cut” a dish that is rich, salty, oily, fatty or mildly spicy, serving the dish alongside a tart-tasting wine will be effective and refreshing. Think of what I call the “lemon-wedge rule”: just as a squeeze of lemon juice will accent or “cut” a rich or salty dish (tempering the brininess of seafood, for example), an acidic wine will do the same. Foods served with cream-or butter-based sauces, oily or strong-tasting fish or shellfish, mildly piquant dishes, and virtually all deep-fried foods are prime candidates.
Acidic wines are the best wines to pair with tart foods.
Tart dishes, such as a green salad dressed with a vinaigrette, and sharp ingredients, such as capers, leeks, and tomatoes, harmonize best with wines of similar sharpness. A wine that is less tart than the dish it is accompanying will be thinned out and may come off quite unpleasantly. When serving wine with a sharp dish or ingredients, you would be hard-pressed to find a wine that is too tart! Examples of wines that can be too puckery on their own but sing with food include Pinot Blanc, cool-climate Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc, and some brut Champagnes.
Acidity brings out the integrity of good, simple ingredients.
I like to think of the acid in wines as the gastronomic equivalent of the yellow highlighter pen. The quick swoosh of the highlighter makes the words on a page stand out. A wine's acidity can mimic this phenomenon with food by bringing out the essence of an ingredient's flavor. The summer's first sweet corn or vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes, freshly cracked boiled crab or lobster, and farm-fresh mozzarella cheese all take on another dimension when paired simply with a sharp, uncomplicated wine to make their vibrant and delicious flavor “pop.”
Acidity allows a tart wine, which may seem too sharp for sipping on its own, to work perfectly in conjunction with food. To some it is counterintuitive to think that a sour, unpleasant bottle can turn into liquid magic at the table—but sometimes life is stranger than fiction.
By the way, low-acid wines are more difficult to match with food. It's best to serve them with milder ingredients that contain a touch of sharpness (such as a squeeze of lemon). A flat Pinot Grigio or Chardonnay may perk up if paired with an otherwise mild fish mousse served with a wedge of lemon and a tangy jicama salad. With some experimentation and exploration, the role of acidity, and its importance, will become increasingly clear to you.
KEY 2. SWEETNESS
Wines can be sweet in varying degrees. Unctuous dessert wines have specific serving guidelines, which I cover in the dessert wine section. Wines can also be off-dry (a little sweet) or semi-dry (medium sweet). We often find a little sweetness in Rieslings, Chenin Blancs, lighter-style Muscats, and some styles of sparkling wine.
Sweetness is a great counterbalance to moderate levels of spicy heat.
Many Asian preparations, such as spicy Korean barbecued chicken or the archetypal Chinese twice-cooked pork, need not be paired exclusively with beer! Here, moderate amounts of sweetness in the wine provide a nice foil for the heat and tame its ferocity, even alleviating the burning sensation caused by the peppers.
Sweetness in the wine can complement a slight sweetness in food.
Offering an off-dry Chenin Blanc with a fillet of grouper, served with a fresh mango salsa, would be a good example of this observation. Others would include pairing sweet wines with dishes accompanied by chutney or sauces made with fresh or reconstituted dried fruit (such as raisins, apricots, and cherries). The fruit flavors resonate well with most off-dry wines.
Sweetness can be an effective contrast to salt.
This is the rationale behind the long-established matches of French Sauternes with salty Roquefort (and similar blue cheeses) and port with English Stilton. However, this genre of pairing requires some experimenting, as not all of these marriages are happy ones.
Sweetness can take the edge off foods that are too tart.
This type of contrast requires precise balance, or the food can make the wine come across as sour. Many Asian appetizers with vinaigrettes, at once tart and sweet, pair seamlessly with off-dry wines. The ever-popular green papaya salad, found in the cuisines of Thailand, Vietnam, and Myanmar, is a classic example.
Dessert-style or extremely sweet wines must be sweeter than the dessert itself.
The wisdom of this rule is evident to anybody who has ever attended a wedding and experienced the unfortunate pairing of expensive dry brut Champagne with cake covered in gloppy, white buttercream frosting. Dom Perignon suddenly tastes like lemony seltzer water. At a minimum, the levels of sweetness in the wine and the dessert should match. With wedding cake, serving a sweeter bubbly (such as the seemingly misnamed but sweeter extra dry or demi-sec styles) would be a much better call, as the sweetness of the wine and the cake are better matched. Fruit-based desserts are more compatible tablemates for dessert wines; avoid thick, sweet buttercreams and ganache with bubblies!
KEY 3. SALTINESS
Although saltiness is not a physical attribute of wine, it is present in most foods and has such a significant impact on wine that I've included it in the keys to understanding wine. Just as doctors encourage us to pay close attention to sodium intake, so at table you should be aware of how the salt content of dishes will affect wine selection. I offer the following suggestions to help you achieve the best pairings with salty foods:
Saltiness is lessened by wine's acidity.
Again, whites and sparkling wines, as a rule, are inherently sharper and therefore generally fare better with salty dishes than most red wines. For example, the zesty bite of acidity from a glass of young Pinot Grigio is a refreshing foil to deep-fried calamari or salt-crusted baked fish.
Salt perception is exaggerated by tannin.
Tannin is the substance that creates a chalky taste and sandpapery texture in red wines (see key 4 below). This is an important consideration when serving a salty dish. Tannin will often accentuate an excess of salt, resulting in a match with as much charm as sucking on a salt lick, especially when you're serving a rich red wine, ample in tannin (bitterness).
Alcohol is accentuated by salt.
An abundance of salt in food will make wines seem “hotter” (more alcoholic) than they are. This is extremely important to know, because you want the wine to harmonize with the dish, not come across like a shot of vodka. High levels of spice and heat (from jalapeño, cayenne, and so on) will also make wine come across as quite hot. Drinking full-bodied wine with Texas five-alarm chili almost always leads to heartburn!
Salty dishes can be counterbalanced by off-dry or sweet wines.
Saltiness and sweetness are often magic together. Though people don't think of them that way, salty/sweet combinations are time-honored and well loved. Snickers bars, Reese's peanut butter cups, and cookie-dough ice cream are extreme cases of this phenomenon, but it's equally present in savory Thai fish cakes with their accompanying sweet/hot sauce, the contrast of country ham and sweet mustard, and a salty fast-food hamburger with sweet ketchup and relish.
If, despite the cautions above, a wine and food combination comes off as being flat, try a sprinkle from the salt shaker. Occasionally, adding salt to the dish can miraculously revive the wine's presence.
