230

The previous chapters have presented a variety of ideas on wine and food elements and how they react to each other.

Chapters 5 through 10 provided twelve basic rules to consider in wine and food pairing decisions. These are

not hard-and-fast laws, but they do provide guidance in making better wine and food matching decisions.

These rules provide a tool chest of considerations when pairing. The exercises thus far have focused on eval-

uating specific elements of wine and food and their interactions when tasted together. This process provides

you with a taste, texture, and flavor memory that will be useful during the remaining exercises and in future

pairing decisions. This experience also adds to your tool chest when assessing food-and-wine elements in the

future.

Rule #1: Food sweetness level should be less than or equal to wine sweetness level.

Rule #2: Food acidity level should be less than or equal to wine acidity level.

Rule #3: Highly salty foods work better with wines that have high effervescence.

Rule #4: The negative impact of bitter food is lessened when combined with wines of moderate to high levels

of effervescence.

Rule #5: Wine tannin levels should be equal to animal-based food fattiness levels.

Rule #6: Wine acidity levels should be equal to vegetable-based food fattiness levels.

Rule #7: Wine overall body should be equal to food overall body.

Rule #8: Food spiciness should be equal to wine spiciness.

Rule #9: Spicy food should be paired with off-dry, acidic white wines.

Rule #10: Food-and-wine flavor types can be matched using similarity or contrast.

Rule #11: Wine and food flavor intensity should be equal.

Rule #12: Flavor persistency of wine and food should be equal.

Tasting wine and food can be done either sequentially or in a mixed procedure. The sequential process allows

the taster to evaluate the wine or food on its own merits. Is it high or low in acidity? What is the overall body?

How intense is the flavor? A mixed process occurs when the wine and food items are tasted simultaneously.

This type of tasting allows the taster to assess the interaction of the wine and food elements. Did one of the

items overpower the other? Did the wine make the food taste exceedingly bitter or vice versa? Did the sweetness

level in the food cause the wine to taste thin and acidic?

In the next three chapters (Chapters 11–13), you will evaluate, taste, and analyze wine and food items using

both the sequential and mixed tasting processes. These assessments will combine all of the elements of food

and wine presented in the earlier chapters. For this assessment, you will be using an instrument that brings

together all of these elements into three pages.