KEY 4. TANNIN
In wine, tannin can be associated with a bitter taste and a somewhat gritty texture. This is the same astringency (from tannic acid) encountered in tea that has been steeped too long. Tannins in wine come from two sources: fruit tannins generated from the skins of grapes, especially in big, generous red wines, and wood tannins from the oak barrels in which the wine is aged.
Longer maceration of wine with its skins amplifies fruit tannins, whereas extended barrel aging, especially in newer barrels, accentuates the wood tannins.
Serve bitter foods with tannic wines.
Foods that have been grilled, charred, or blackened are excellent vehicles for showing off bitter-edged wines. Ingredients that are implicitly bitter, like arugula, endive, and sautéed broccoli rabe, are great, too. There's nothing like a charcoal-grilled steak with a full-bodied, tannic Cabernet Sauvignon.
Counterbalance tannins with fat and protein.
This is the fancy way of saying drink red wine with red meat! Those hard and astringent tannins are tamed when paired with rare to medium-rare red meat (ample in fat and protein) or many cheeses (also chock-full of both). If the wine is too tannic, however, the tannins can still dominate. Also, certain hard, sharp, or pungent cheeses—such as aged Parmesan or Romano, French goat cheeses, aged Spanish Manchego, or aged dry Cheddar or Gouda—can give the tannic red wines a metallic character. If you serve a very tannic wine alongside a dish containing little or no protein (a vegetarian entrée, for example), the tannins can react chemically with the available protein (on your tongue and the inside of your mouth) and come across as even more tannic.
Tannin and fish oil usually aren't happy together.
This lesson requires no subtle training of the palate. Generally, all it takes is one bite of fish alongside a rich, tannic wine to provoke the unpleasant “sucking on a penny” reaction between fish oil and tannin. Red wines with less tannin (Pinot Noir is a prime example) fare far better in this challenging pairing of wine and food.
KEY 5. OAK
Although plenty of wines are not aged in wood barrels, many winemakers claim it's impossible to create a fine wine without oak. The vanilla and coconut that you may detect in Chardonnay and the smoke and chocolate identifiable in Cabernet Sauvignon are not from the grapes: the flavors we associate with our favorite wines are often due to the extended time spent in oak. With respect to oak and food:
Oaky flavors are exaggerated by food.
Sooner or later every wine lover runs into a wine that seems too oaky or heavy-handed. Food amplifies the oak in wine, making it stand out as a distinct flavor component. Try any extremely oaky wine with virtually any entrée, and lo and behold, you'll have wine, food, and a lumberyard!
Oaky wines need very specific foods to show them at their best.
This is not to say you can't enjoy oak-aged wines with food; you simply need to choose carefully. Oak imparts tannins (bitterness) that can easily dominate food and need to be balanced out. If you want to show off an oaky wine (a spanking new Cabernet Sauvignon or a modern-style Italian Barolo, for example), simply tailor the food to handle it: serve grilled meat and similar dishes.
With oak, match the flavors in the wine (toast, char or smoke, caramel, and so on) by using cooking techniques, or ingredients cooked with those techniques, that also impart those flavors: grilling, smoking, caramelizing, and so on.
Lightly oaked or even unoaked wines are the easiest to pair.
Most of the time, I prefer to serve wines that are low in oak, extremely well-balanced, or unoaked (that is, made and aged in stainless-steel tanks or in very old wooden barrels that impart no flavor). Minimizing oak creates a level playing field, allowing you more flexibility in matching your wine with different foods and methods of preparation. An unoaked Chardonnay can work with foods ranging from simply poached fillet of sole to tandoori chicken to veal piccata, served with lemon, capers, and garlic, whereas an oakier version of the Chardonnay would pair well only with the sole.
Oak adds smoothness and roundness of texture to wines.
Wines that spend no time in oak, or very limited time, are much more austere. Wines aged in oak are more mouth-filling and voluptuous. You can play off this added texture by complementing, for example, a silky, oak-aged Chardonnay with a dish accompanied by a cream sauce or compound butter. A velvety Merlot can be sublime when served with a slow-cooked osso buco or other slow-braised dishes of similar personality.
KEY 6. ALCOHOL
Alcohol is what distinguishes wine from grape juice, and a wine's alcohol content is the primary determinant of body and weight. As a rough guide, the higher the wine's alcohol content, the fuller-bodied the wine seems. As with fat content in dairy products, an increase in alcohol content increases the perception of density and texture. A milder wine (7 to 10 percent alcohol) is significantly less weighty and textured on the palate than one of 13 to 14 percent.
Match wines and foods of equal “weight.”
This principle is somewhat intuitive. You shouldn't crush a gentle Pinot Noir with a stick-to-the-ribs beef stew. Nor should you match light, simple fillet of sole with an amply textured Chardonnay, which might obliterate the fish. Try to keep the mouth-weight profiles of the wine and food on a par. For example, medium-bodied red wine such as a Merlot or Chianti is successful served with a medium-weight dish such as roast chicken. So is a full-flavored risotto with scallops and cream served with an equally rich barrel-fermented white Burgundy like a Meursault. As the wine's alcohol content increases, the food-pairing options decrease.
We know now that our perception of a wine's alcohol is amplified by food, specifically by salt and by spicy heat. If a very powerful wine is paired with spicy dishes, you may feel as though someone poured gasoline on the fire! Lots of salt creates a similar effect. In general terms, medium-bodied wines (those of medium alcohol content, 11 to 13 percent), and even lighter wines are easier to work with at the table.
THE KEYS TO UNDERSTANDING FOOD
Which comes first, the food or the wine? This question, like the chicken-and-egg dilemma, can lead people in circles, because the synergy between food and wine makes it impossible to make decisions about either one in isolation. But to know how a food might affect the way we perceive a good wine, we need to understand how various flavors and preparation techniques contribute to the taste of a finished dish. Now that we know how to define a wine's ability to go with food, we need to get a handle on how to understand a dish.
Recipes are as different as snowflakes; it's impossible to pair up every recipe with a single perfect wine. As with wines, in thinking about any recipe the rationale remains the same: identify certain basic characteristics. Rather than get caught up in thinking about a dish in all its complexity, it's far easier to look at the three food keys and then determine how to proceed.
KEY 1. INGREDIENTS
We have been “trained” to think about a dish primarily in terms of its ingredients. From a wine and food perspective, this approach allows you to think about pairings in a formulaic way: if you know the ingredients, you know the correct wine selection, right? Red meat with red wine, and white meat and fish with white wine. Well, sort of.
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