Determining Which Wine Goes with a Meal Every dish is dynamic — it's made up of several ingredients and flavors that interact to create a (more or less) delicious whole. Every wine is dynamic in exactly the same way. When food and wine combine in your mouth, the dynamics of each change; the result is completely individual to each dish-and-wine combination.  When wine meets food, several things can happen: The food can exaggerate a characteristic of the wine. For example, if you eat walnuts (which are tannic) with a tannic red wine, such as a Bordeaux, the wine tastes so dry and astringent that most people would consider it undrinkable. The food can diminish a characteristic of the wine. Protein diminishes tannin, for example, and an overly tannic red wine — unpleasant on its own — could be judged delightful when you drink it with a rare steak. The flavor intensity of the food can obliterate the wine's flavor or vice versa. If you've ever drunk a big, rich red wine with a delicate filet of sole, you've had this experience first-hand. The wine can contribute new flavors to the dish. For example, a red Zinfandel that's gushing with berry fruit can bring its berry flavors to the dish, as if another ingredient had been added to the recipe. The combination of wine and food can create an unwelcome third-party flavor that wasn't in either the wine or the food originally. For example, you may get a metallic flavor when you eat plain white meat turkey with red Bordeaux.   The food and wine can interact perfectly, creating a sensational taste experience that is greater than the food or the wine alone.   Properties Of Wine Fortunately, what happens between food and wine is not haphazard. Certain elements of food react in predictable ways with certain elements of wine, giving us a fighting chance at making successful matches. The major components of wine (alcohol, sweetness, acid, and tannin) relate to the basic tastes of food (sweetness, sourness, bitterness, and saltiness) like the way that the principle of wine balance operates: Some of the elements exaggerate each other, and some of them compensate for each other.  Here are some ways that food and wine interact, based on the components of the wine. Remember, each wine and each dish has more than one component, and the simple relationships described can be complicated by other elements in the wine or the food. Whether a wine is considered tannic, sweet, acidic, or high in alcohol depends on its dominant component. Tannic Wines Tannic wines include most wines based on the Cabernet Sauvignon grape, including red Bordeaux, northern Rhône reds, Barolo and Barbaresco, and any wine — white or red — that has become tannic from aging in new oak barrels. These wines can diminish the perception of sweetness in a food, n taste softer and less tannic when served with protein-rich, fatty foods, such as steak or cheese, and taste less bitter when paired with salty foods. They can taste astringent, or mouth-drying, when drunk with spicy-hot foods Sweet Wines Some wines that often have some sweetness include most inexpensive California white wines, White Zinfandel, many Rieslings (unless they are labeled "dry" or "trocken"), and medium-dry Vouvray. Sweet wines also include dessert wines, such as Port, sweetened Sherries, and late-harvest wines. These wines can taste less sweet, but fruitier, when matched with salty foods can make salty foods more appealing  and go well with sweet foods Acidic Wines Acidic wines include most Italian white wines; Sancerre, Pouilly-Fumé, and Chablis; many red wines from Rioja; most dry Rieslings; and wines based on Sauvignon Blanc that are fully dry. These wines taste less acidic when served with salty foods and  taste less acidic when served with slightly sweet foods, make foods taste slightly saltier and  counterbalance oily or fatty heaviness in food High Alcohol Wines High alcohol wines include many California wines, both white and red; southern Rhône whites and reds; Barolo and Barbaresco; fortified wines, such as Port and Sherry; and most wines produced from grapes grown in warm climates. These wines can overwhelm lightly flavored or delicate dishe but  go well with slightly sweet foods. Birds Of A Feather, Or Opposites Attract? These days, wine and food people acknowledge that two principles can help in matching wine with food: the complementary principle and the contrast principle. The complementary principle involves choosing a wine that is similar in some way to the dish you are planning to serve, while the contrast principle (not surprisingly) involves combining foods with wines that are dissimilar to them in some way. The characteristics of a wine that can either resemble or contrast with the characteristics of a dish are the wine's flavors: Earthy, herbal, fruity, vegetal, and so on. The intensity of flavor in the wine: Weak flavor intensity, moderately flavorful, or very flavorful The wine's texture: Crisp and firm, or soft and supple The weight of the wine: Light-bodied, medium-bodied, or full-bodied You probably use the complementary principle often without realizing it: You choose a light-bodied wine to go with a light dish, a medium-bodied wine to go with a fuller dish, and a full-bodied wine to go with a heavy dish. Some other examples of the complementary principle in action are: Dishes with flavors that resemble those in the wine. Think about the flavors in a dish the same way you think about the flavors in wine — as families of flavors. If a dish has mushrooms, it has an earthy flavor; if it has citrus or other elements of fruit, it has a fruity flavor (and so on). Then consider which wines would offer their own earthy flavor, fruity flavor, herbal flavor, spicy flavor, or whatever. The earthy flavors of white Burgundy complement risotto with mushrooms, for example, and an herbal Sancerre complements chicken breast with fresh herbs. Foods with texture that's similar to that of the wine. A California Chardonnay with a creamy, rich texture could match the rich, soft texture of lobster, for example. Foods and wines whose intensity of flavor match. A hearty meat dish like a stew would be at home with a hearty, full-bodied wine, especially if the wine had earthy flavors like the root vegetables in the stew. The contrast principle seeks to find flavors or texture in a wine that are not in a dish but that would enhance it. A dish of fish or chicken in a rich cream and butter sauce, for example, may be matched with a dry Vouvray, a white wine whose crispness (thanks to its uplifting, high acidity) would counterbalance the heaviness of the dish. A dish with earthy flavors, such as portobello mushrooms and fresh fava beans (or potatoes and black truffles), may contrast nicely with the pure fruit flavor of an Alsace Riesling. You also apply the contrast principle every time you decide to serve simple food, like unadorned lamb chops or hard cheese and bread, with a gloriously complex aged wine In order to apply either principle, of course, you have to have a good idea of what the food is going to taste like and what various wines taste like. That second part can be a real stumbling block for people who don't devote every ounce of their free energy to learning about wine. The solution is to ask your wine merchant. A retailer may not have the world's greatest knack in wine and food pairings (then again, he or she may), but at least he should know what his wines taste like.

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