Pairings | Wine pairing
Wine and Cheese Pairing for Beginners
Wine and cheese are well known bedfellows but if you’re a beginner it might seem daunting to decide exactly which wine to choose for which cheese. This guide will quickly help you to get started pairing wine and cheese like a pro.
10 top food pairings for South African wines
If you’ve visited the Cape Winelands you’ll know what an amazing food and drink scene it has but you may still wonder what sort of dishes to order in a restaurant or to pair with South African wines at home.
My top 20 drink pairings of 2013
So what stood out in the way of food and wine matches - and pairings with other drinks - in 2013?
A beginner's guide to pairing food and wine
You know your interest in wine has entered the next level when you start to wonder what food goes with the wine you’re drinking. So I thought it might be helpful to put together this beginner's guide, covering the basics of pairing wine with food.
Wine pairing: it’s not about rules just useful knowhow
Every so often someone has a go at food and wine pairing. The media love it as they like to knock anything to do with wine (the other old chestnut being that wine professionals haven’t a clue because they can’t always recognise wines blind)
Some food and wine pairing tips from What Food What Wine? 2012
I’ve just spent the past two days at What Food What Wine? tasting wine alongside dishes as disparate as smoked salmon and apple crumble, Stilton and steak and lasagne and lamb - a bit of an assault on the palate (and stomach!) but one of the best ways to work out what wine really works with your favourite recipes
My top food and wine pairings of 2020
Back in March when Covid first hit I remember thinking ‘no-one’s going to want to think about food and wine pairing’ and put my match of the week feature on hold.
Partake, Healdsburg - a new concept in food and wine pairing
Since few Californian wineries now have restaurants on their premises* it’s been more of a challenge to showcase their food. But Sonoma-based Kendall-Jackson has come up with an ingenious solution in the form of a food pairing restaurant Partake which opened in Healdsburg this March.
A food and wine pairing experiment with Dr Peter Klosse
Over lunch with Peter Klosse the other day I re-discovered what a huge difference the way an ingredient is cooked and sauced can make to the wine you choose.
10 Argentinian wine pairings that don’t involve steak!
Everyone knows that malbec and steak is a classic pairing but the Argentinians do of course eat other foods and drink other wines. Here are 10 that I came across on my recent trip that might possibly surprise you.
20 food and wine pairings to learn by heart
Inspired by the recent spate of minimal ingredient cookbooks such as Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Three Good Things I thought it might be helpful to come up with 20 wine matches that are easy to remember and which pretty well everyone will enjoy.
Is there a scientific basis for wine and food pairing?
I went to a really interesting seminar last week on matching champagne with food. It was based on the chemical compounds flavourist Danny Hodrien of F & F projects had identified in Mumm champagnes using gas chromatography, solid phase micro-extraction and mass spectrometry (No, I don’t know what they are either). Based on those findings Iain Graham, the executive chef at the Caprice had devised a range of canapes that incorporated the flavours rather than seeking to complement them
Are wine pairings getting too specific?
Having moaned for years how unhelpful it was for retailers and wine producers to put an incredibly vague ‘good with pasta’ or ‘good with chicken’ on their back labels I’m not sure the pendulum hasn’t swung too far in the other direction.
Top food and wine matching experiences in the Cape Winelands
So sophisticated is the South African food and drink scene now that you can expect to find suggested wine pairings at practically every restaurant you go to but some wine farms have made even more of a feature of their skill at combining the two - a fun way of learning the art of matching food and wine.
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Matchingfoodandwine.com relaunched with style!
Welcome to the relaunched matchingfoodandwine.com. I hope you like our glamourous new look devised by our good friends Miller Design and executed (with infinite patience) by web designers fuzzylime.
Should a £3.99 wine be an award-winning food match?
The results of this year’s What Food, What Wine? competition were announced yesterday and, as in previous years, I’m sure eyebrows will be raised at some of the trophy winners.
An interview with Enrico Bernardo
If any sommelier looks set for Gordon Ramsay-style super-stardom it has to be Enrico Bernado.
Can synaesthesia enhance our ability to appreciate wine?
Author (and self-proclaimed shopkeeper) Sally Butcher of Persepolis asks whether Grenache rosé reminds you of patchouli and Malbec of Beethoven. And are we missing out if we’re not fellow synaesthetes?
Wine Wars at Arbutus
If you thought food and wine pairing was the least likely recipe for a raucous night out you’d be wrong. This week’s ‘Wine Wars’, the first in a series* at London restaurant Arbutus, was a noisy partisan event that had guests arguing passionately over the respective merits of Piedmontese wines over a 4 course menu of Italian-inspired dishes.
For a perfect match a wine needs to provide an element that's missing in a dish
One of the problems about today’s ultra-complicated restaurant food is that dishes tend to be what I once heard aptly described as ‘ingredient-heavy’. Which can mean that a wine of character may just be one flavour too much.
Using 'bridge' ingredients to create a perfect match
One of the most useful tricks to master, especially when you’re dealing with a tricky-to-match ingredient, is to introduce a ‘bridge’ ingredient - in other words an element in the dish that makes it easier to pair with the wine you want to drink. It can be something as simple as cream or mashed potato or something rather more specific that picks out a flavour in the wine you’re serving.
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