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Novice, amateur or excellent cook, we are all impressed when the time where we must choose the wine.
Peculiar to develop a refined menu, trend or theme, yet it is difficult to have the same gift to select wine to accompany the dishes or the menu as a whole.
The combination of food and wine as a whole. The tastes and flavors of the dishes is a wine of our region. However to avoid a catastrophe dinner, a fewcommon sense rules are followed and provide an almost perfect result …
Rule 1: The choice of wine depending on the food served!
If the dish served is light, a light wine is enough. A table or country wine, which is young and flexible and easy to drink, may accompany any casual meal. The color is not so important.
Examples
- Red: light burgundy Gamay de Savoie, Touraine and Anjou, Côtes du Roussillon, Coteaux du Languedoc, Côtes du Rhône
- White: Pinot Blanc from Alsace
- Rosé: Côtes-de-Provence.
If the dish is elegant with high cooking skills involved: an elegant, robust and powerful wine will reveal the subtle flavor of the dish.
Some red wines often served in these contexts: Nuits-St-Georges, Pommard, Pomerol, Saint-Emilion, Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
If the dish is spicy, go for a sweet wine: the sugar from wine reinforces the spicy touch from the dish. Surprising as it may seem, a good Indian dish goes well with Gewurztraminer or a tannic red…
Rule 2: Serving order
Serve the wines according to their character. So that one does not erase the other’s flavor.
The wine is drunk dry before sweet. white and rosé wines can be enjoyed, preferably before the red wine, young wine before old wine, the winebefore the light bodied …
Do not “burn” your taste buds, but let them get used gradually.
Rule 3: No red wine on cheese
Contrary to the popular belief, red wines do not fit always well with cheese, because their tannins accentuate the bitterness of the latter. Choose a white wine from the same terroir as cheese. Think that back in the days, people used to drink and eat the food they had locally at hand.
Examples: a white Sancerre with goat cheese. Cider goes well with camembert…
Rule 4: “Sweet/salty dishes” don’t always mean “sweet wines”
For Oriental cuisine and Asian curry, fresh and aromatic wines will identify with the exotic flavor flavors without denaturing them, contrary to sweet white wines.
Rule 5: Play with the color harmony
Play with it, you’ll not likely to go wrong! Red meat and red wine, white wine and fish, salmon and light red, cheese and white wine, chocolate and red wine…
However, according to the preparation and ingredients, it’s up to you to find the dominant ingredient which should be given wine.
