Matching food & wine

The old rule, red wine with red meat, white wine with fish, was a good one to follow back in the days of square meals. Today, recipes are more interesting with a wider range of flavors and textures which makes matching them with wine more fun and interesting. When picking a wine, look for a match between the flavor characteristics of the food and wine. Also, lighter flavored wines usually go better with lighter flavored dishes and robust wines with robust foods. Here are some guidelines that help make matching food and wine easier. But in case you lose this guide, the three most important rules to remember are:

1) Drink what you like.

2) Just about any wine with a meal is better than NO wine at all.

3) When panic sets in, red wine with red meat, white wine with fish.


Serving temperature

As a rule, white and sparkling wines are best served well-chilled (45° to 55° Fahrenheit), with lighter, fruitier whites at the low end of the scale and fuller, more flavorful whites, such as Chardonnay, at the upper range. An hour in the refrigerator or a half-hour in the freezer is usually enough. Over chilling should be avoided, because it stuns a wine's aromas and flavors.

Red wines should be served at cool room temperature (55° to 65° Fahrenheit), with lighter, fruitier reds, such as "Beaujolais" or "Pinot Noir", at the lower range of the scale and fuller-bodied varieties, such as "Cabernet" and "Zinfandel", at the top.

Of course, specific conditions may call for exceptions to these rules. On a hot day, for example, when room temperatures may run into the 70's or 80's, it's a good idea to chill a full-bodied red slightly before serving serving, to mute it's alcoholic "heat". Conversely, a very rich white may be best served at close to room temperature, so its complex aromas and flavors may be fully appreciated.

Extracting the cork

Stoppers formed from the spongy bark of the cork oak tree have been used to seal whine containers for over 2000 years. Since the 17th century, when glass bottles originated, they have been the vintner's preferred method for protecting wine from air. Today, although there are effective and inexpensive alternatives to cork -- such as metal screw caps, which require no implement to open -- wine consumers are still attached to the romance and tradition of the cork stopper.