Most people match wine with food.
I tend to match food to my wine.
Anyone should be able to start with either food or wine and then match the other. Some days you want to open a specific bottle you’ve been saving and so that should be the centre of your plan.
There is some foundational science behind matching food and drinks. From there, you can add a layers of creativity and personal preference.
For example, when looking for a pairing with spicy richer Indian food, choosing an off-dry (slightly sweet) wine such as Riesling is a complementary scientific pairing because the slight sweetness helps to offset the heat and the light body of the Riesling will counterbalance the richness of the dish. But not everyone wants to contain the heat, and in this case, a richer rosé works well.
Michele’s husband is planning on ordering more cold bugs in the future.
My husband loves Bugs. As an American, I think he secretly loves saying that he’s eating Bugs for dinner. If the Bugs are cold, I suggest a Chablis. If they are warm, then a white Burgundy with a kiss of oak.
Chablis has a lovely depth of flavour and you can taste the sea, because there are minerally flavours emanating from the ancient sea creature skeletons that are part of the soil in Chablis. Plus, the wine is bright enough from its high acidity to counterbalance the rich bug meat.
Oysters and Semillon are one of my favourite pairings. I had one of the most exhilarating wine and food pairing moments of my life recently at Brokenwood winery, in the Hunter Valley. The service team was beyond fun and I was served a fresh oyster in its shell, then held the shell at my mouth while our server poured Semillon into the shell surrounding the oyster, so that I could slurp both down together.
Why has it taken all these years for me to experience the divine simplicity of oysters and Semillon this way? It was a knockout and the video is included here.
I love entertaining at home around a food theme for a whole evening and then planning wines to go with that single food. One example was a farewell dinner party for some friends moving to Singapore and we planned the evening around one of their favourite foods, wild boar. Wild boar is surprisingly versatile….. for example, we built a dish substituting wild boar for bacon to create an oysters Kilpatrick version that we coined “Boaring Oysters”, and we sabred a richer Champagne, the Dom Perignon, to enjoy with them.
The main course was a rack of wild boar, which we classically paired with a Supertuscan Tignanello, where a shared terroir created a perfect pairing. You can just imagine the wild boar stealing the ripe grapes straight from the vines in Chianti Classico.
One area that I think will become increasingly popular is pairing low alcohol and no alcohol drinks with food. There is lots of room to create some exciting and very deliberate pairings if you are using things like botanicals to make non-alcoholic drinks.