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Food and Wine Matching

Here is a great set of rules for matching food and wine provided by Killerby Vineyards, one of the wineries in our community of boutique wineries.

Pairing Food and Wine - The Six New Rules

Pairing food and wine is about synergy - neither one should overpower the other. Trust your palate when pairing food and wine to find similarities or contrasts in flavours. This is done with the food and wine's flavours, weight, intensity and basic taste. Let your palate guide you.

Wine and food pairing's "old rules" don't suitably address the wine and cuisine diversity (New World and Old World) available today. Food and wine's recent innovations calls for "new rules". Although some may say there aren't rules, my research indicates a general consensus on some guidelines. According to Goldstein (16-17), there are 6 steps in his guidelines:

Balance: Use the dominate flavour of a dish, often the sauce, as your guide in pairing. For example, use the wine used in the sauce as the compliment drink with the dish.
Contrast: Opposites attract, therefore sweet wine goes with sour or acidic food. Subdued, complex older wines deserve simple foods not heavy sauces.
Highly seasoned foods: Spicy, salty, and smoky flavours are best paired with fruity, low tannin, lower alcohol-content wines.
Rich foods: Rich and fatty foods often work well with full-bodied chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, merlot or shiraz.
Sweet foods: The sweetness of the dish should be less than the sweetness of the wine. This is easily accomplished by adding citrus juice or vinegar to the dish.
High acid: Highly acidic foods such as tomatoes, citrus fruits and goat cheese usually go best with acidic wines such as a sauvignon blanc.

A seventh example can be added to this list- the condiment style. Think of the wine as a condiment. If veal picatta or chilled shellfish would go well with fresh lemon juice, try a crispy acidic wine like a sauvignon blanc. If you savor butter on shellfish, such as lobster, team it with a buttery chardonnay (Schowe 1).

At present, there are some general rules to follow with multiple wine courses: dry before sweet; white before red; young before old; simple before complex; and light before heavy. There is one notable exception to this and that is a sauterne with a foie gras. A palate cleanser (intermezzo), or a glass of water may help if there is a conflict in the wine sequence of a meal.

The wines of Killerby Vineyards can be found at https://www.boutiquewineries.com.au/winery/killerbyvineyards