Wine and food pairing 101 – SIMILARITIES

“Red wine with meat, white wine with fish” – or so they say. Pairing food and wine is a little more complex than that, but it’s actually fairly easy once you get the hang of it, and learning how to match wine to food (and vice versa) can be a lot of fun.

The first step is learning to appreciate exactly what’s in that glass of wine, and then understanding how these characteristics could enhance the food being served. Most people choose their meal first, and then select a wine to best accompany it, but it’s just as much fun to start with a bottle (or two) of wine and build a meal around it. A future article will take a look at the various qualities of wine and how these can interact with the various qualities of food, but for now here are some simple guidelines that are actually common sense, and very easy to apply. What we are actually doing is matching for similarity in a variety of contexts.

Regionality plays a role. Simply put, if you’re on holidays in Italy (or preparing an Italian meal at home), do a little research. Take a moment to learn about the local specialties, and try them with the local wine. A dish from Tuscany (Florentine beefsteak, anyone?) will likely pair well with that Chianti Classico or Bolgheri you’ve been saving in your cellar. Not by chance, a Vermentino from the coastal region of Liguria will be a lovely match for trenette al pesto (flat semi-broad pasta with traditional pesto sauce made from local basil, pine nuts and olive oil). So – match regional wines with the local food.

Sweets for the sweet. This one is quite straight forward – serve dry wines with savoury dishes. When you get to the dessert course, which is presumably something sweet, opt for a sweet wine. This should probably be served slightly chilled if it’s a white wine, as the cold will enhance the acidity which serves to balance the sweetness.

Here’s a little experiment that doesn’t even involve wine – consider a glass of ice cold coca-cola – its acidity and bubbles together with the cold temperature offset the inherent sweetness. Now let that coke sit out for a while to warm up and go flat, and have a sip. It will seem sweeter at the warmer temperature, and overwhelming syrupy sweetness is pretty much all you will notice without the cold and the bubbles.

What will happen if you continue drinking your dinner wine once the custard/apple torte/profiteroles arrive? The wine will seem harsh and aggressive compared to the sweetness in the dessert. Another experiment, this one from my own childhood memories of Sunday mornings: try enjoying freshly squeezed orange juice alongside french toast dripping in maple syrup or toasted crumpets with honey. Not so nice, is it? The sweetness on your plate will cause that lovely spremuta to seem like a glass of acid.

My favourite local Trentino pairing – torta dei fregoloti (a sweet crumbly almond biscuit) with vino santo dessert wine from the upper Lake Garda area (made from late harvest raisined nosiola grapes  – simply divine). Or if in Tuscany, a plate of biscotti di Prato (dry almond biscuits) dipped in vin santo (careful here as there are many different vin santo of varying quality throughout Italy.

Pairing based on complexity Match elaborate culinary preparations with more complex wines. Put simply, a young cheese (let’s say a young asiago) will pair nicely with a simple white wine (pinot blanc? Pinot grigio?). Take a more mature cheese which has developed a stronger flavour profile through a lengthy ageing process, and you will need a more complex wine. When in Trentino, the local mature grana (parmesan style cheese) will dominate that simple white wine – go for a more complex white (barrique aged perhaps), a full bodied red wine, or – my favourite – Trento DOC spumante.

Respect the seasons. Very sadly, seasonal variety in fruits and vegetables has all but ceased to exist in large cities where the supermarket can provide everything year round, flown in from somewhere where it actually is in season. Try shopping at a farmer’s market if you want to see what’s being harvested at the moment. But actually, I’m speaking about the seasons of wine. Essentially, white in the summer (accompanied by fresh summer produce), red in the winter. But why?

It is true that your local wine shop always has your favourite wine, no matter the time of year, but consider the wine making process. Come the fall, white grapes are the first to be harvested in order to preserve their fresh, acidic and floral qualities (international white grape varieties Chardonnay, Pinot Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, Gewürtztraminer, etc. Particular to Trentino: Nosiola Muller Thurgau and Manzoni). These white grapes undergo a relatively short pressing and fermentation process, and simple, young white wines are potentially ready for consumption the following spring/summer. 

It follows that white wines are more suitable for foods in season during the spring and summer with the simple and often cold preparation favoured in the hot Italian summer: light dishes, salads, fish, pasta with light vegetable sauces, ravioli al burro e salvia, panzanella (Tuscan bread and tomato salad), cold pasta and rice salads, prosciutto e melone, caprese, and so on. Trentino summer specialties include trout and other fresh water fish from the abundant rivers and lakes, and carpaccio di carne salada (thin slices of raw beef that has been marinated with spices, juniper berries and bay leaves, typical of the Lake Garda area).

Later in the fall, the red grapes are harvested: native to Trentino are the red grape varieties Marzemino, Teroldego and Rebo, along with international varieties Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Noir, Syrah, etc. Red grapes particular to various parts of Italy include Sangiovese (used in Chianti), Barbera, Nebbiolo (Barolo), Corvina (Valpolicella), Lagrein (Alto Adige and Trentino variety) and Primitivo (called Zinfandel in the USA). Red grapes, in addition to being picked later than white varieties, undergo a longer maceration and fermentation process with the juice having prolonged contact with the grape skins. Simple red wines are generally ready, bottled and out in the store the autumn/winter after the grapes are picked. 

When the summer comes to an end, fall and winter meals become somewhat more substantial and are served warm, and pair better with red wines. Roasted meat, game when the hunting season opens, stews, roasted root vegetables, pasta with heavier, more complex meat sauces (pappardelle sul cinghiale – fresh broad pasta with wild boar sauce), baked pasta, and dishes featuring the new olive oil pressed in late autumn (ribollita, bread stew with cannellini beans and cavolo nero (black kale) if you are fortunate to find yourself in Tuscany). Trentino winter dishes include canederli (bread dumplings served in a variety of ways), polenta, goulash (not the Austro-Hungarian version with paprika, but a very tasty beef stew nonetheless), crauti (fermented sauerkraut), strangolapreti (spinach balls rumoured to have caused a greedy priest to have choked while gorging on them), smacafam (a rustic oven-baked egg/milk/flour combination with Trentino luganiga sausage), orzetto (barley stew), and so on.

The rule of thumb here is – light summer dishes generally pair well with young white wines, while heavier winter fare usually goes well with red wines.

So – go forth and drink (and eat) mindfully! Do your research, consider regionality, sweetness, complexity and the season, and you can’t go too far wrong.

Note – when travelling in Italy, put aside any preconceived ideas about generic “Italian food” – the things you love in your local Italian restaurant may not be a feature of the region where you’re travelling. “Garlic bread” doesn’t really exist here, at least not anything like what you may have had in a North American Italian restaurant. Typically, “garlic bread” here is one of the myriad variations of bruschetta: grilled bread that is then rubbed with a clove of garlic and drizzled with sharp grassy olive oil (try fett’unta in Tuscany during the olive pressing season of November). Similarly, it seems to be the fashion in North America to provide a small bowl of oil (often of dubious quality) for dipping bread in as an appetiser. Certainly, that’s what they do in Italy, right? Well, no. That really doesn’t happen here – it’s a riff on providing bits of bread with which to sample freshly pressed Extra Virgin Olive Oil when you are purchasing a few litres. And lastly, biscotti (literally, “twice cooked” and pronounced “beese COAT y”) are for dipping in dessert wine, not coffee, and if you do want a coffee after a meal, have an espresso, not a cappuccino!