ShowMe Wine Club | Tips For Perfect Food & Wine Pairing
The 5 Things You Must Know About Food & Wine Paring
It’s that time of the month when we bring you the ShowMe Hermanus Wine Club news. We’ve decided to change things up and educate you a bit further on what wine to pair with food. The Hermanus Wine Route has some outstanding wines on offer, pair them with something delicious that will bring out the best flavours in both the wine and food.
First we bring you the wine pairing table…
*Click here for a large image of the chart.
Next we bring you the 5 basic guidelines…
(1) Champion the wine – This is the number one guideline when pairing any wine with a dish. A rich, tannin fuelled red wine should taste like sweet cherries if paired with the right plate of food. Pay attention to the flavours of the wine that you would like to highlight instead of fighting them against the food.
(2) Bitter + Bitter is bad – Our tastebuds are very sensitive towards bitter items. Be careful not to pair a tannin fuelled wine with a bitter plate of food. For example, green beans with a Cabarnet will double the bitter taste. A light tannin wine goes well with fatty or salty items as they balance each other out.
(3) Wine should be sweeter – As a rule make sure that your wine is a tad sweeter than the food that you are planning to eat it with. If the wine is less sweet than the dish it will end up tasting bland. A beautiful port goes well with most desserts!
(4) Wine should be more tart than not – Wine should be naturally more tart than the food. A salad with a tangy dressing is best paired with a dry brut Champagne than a creamy Chardonnay.
(5) Improve earthy wines – Old world wine is better with food than new age wine… When you pair an old, earthy wine with an earthy meal like a rich beef and mushroom stroganoff the wine will naturally taste sweeter, voila!
Source: Madeline Puckette, Wine Folly
You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one. – Len Evans
View more wine estates and wine routes in Hermanus and the Overberg:
- The Stanford wine route
- Wine farms in Stanford
- The Bot River wine route
- The various wine estates along the Bot River wine route
- Wine Estates along the hermanus wine route
- The Hermanus Wine Route
- Red and white wine pairing
More info on the town of Hermanus |