As we all know, the first basic rule of pairing wine and food is red wine goes with red meat, white wine goes with white meat. But is this a rule written in stone? In a word, no. It's certainly a helpful guide if you know nothing about wine but it's rather about personal taste. Personally, I find a dry red wine like Cabernet Sauvignon goes down great with a chicken dish.
So how to choose? Well, think about the meal you intend to serve. If you're cooking something "heavy", like a beef stew or traditional sunday roast then a full bodied red wine, like a Burgundy, would be my choice, even if the meat is chicken or turkey. However, if I'm having a stir fry I would go for a light white wine such as a delicate Chardonnay whether the stir fry contains beef, chicken or whatever. So in this case, my choices would be full bodied wine with heavy food and a delicate wine with light food, regardless of which type of meat the dish is made from. If you're not sure whether a wine is light or full bodied, a good guide is the alcohol content. If we take 13.5% as the starting point, then anything above would be full bodied, and anything below is classed as light.
Another consideration is the flavour of the food. Some people say in this case the wine and food should be paired like-for-like, i.e. a fish cooked in a lemon sauce would be slightly acidic so you should choose a dry, crisp white wine to complement the flavour. Others would say that this is too much of the same and you should go with a slightly sweeter wine for contrast. Again, it's all down to personal taste. I prefer the wine to have a contrasting flavour as I find the flavours of the wine and food tend to get lost in each other if they're too similar.
Finally, I'd like to mention hot, spicy food such as Mexican or Indian. LIke me, you probably prefer to drink beer with these foods as it's more quenching if the food is too hot, whereas a sip of wine doesn't ease the pain at all. In fact if you choose the wrong wine the burning sensation can increase. However, I have found that a chilled sparkling white wine goes down great with a curry, I don't know if the bubbles have anything to do with it but it really helps clear the palate when the going gets tough.
So to finish off, I'd just like to reiterate that there are no rights or wrongs in pairing wine with food, and at the end of the day if you do make a bad choice it won't poison you. In fact the best way to learn is basic trial and error, and if you love your food and wine then you'll have a great time finding out!
Author Resource:-
http://www.fineforwine.com is an online store carrying stock from all the U.K.'s major wine retailers
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