Food and wine

No one has a magic wand to determine the proper “tastes” for food and wine pairing. There are many factors to take into consideration: cooking methods, winemaking styles, experience and tradition, which are all elements involved but are not written in stone.

No matter what all those may have written about food and wine pairing, up until now no one has been able to formulate an overall rule more geometrico demonstrata. The endless variety of tastes, the impossibility of precisely repeating a recipe, along with flavors and aromas and the different types of wines, make any attempt to give a scientific air to such a subject destined to tackle only part of the problem.

The reality of the matter is fortunately much richer and surprisingly pleasing than any theory and one cannot help but agree with Luigi Veronelli who maintained that the best rule is to go against the rules. “Marriages of love” between food and wine, as Veronelli also called it, do not like rules and regulations that are too strict, just like the marriages between people. There are, however, relative rules, which tend to prefer or exclude certain wines with certain foods, more from a sensorial and empirical point of view than for rigid syllogisms or peremptory dictates. Many of these derive from traditional uses, ancient habits, located in certain areas which are almost always where wines are produced. Others are customs consolidated over time but which, in any case, have their own logic and unquestionable rationale.

Method

What is the fundamental principle that determines if a food and wine pairing is better or worse? It is clear that this involves tendencies and not rules, and this should not be forgotten. First of all, it must be clear what it is we want when we pair a wine with food. All wines and all foods are constituted by flavor elements, substances that determine fundamental tastes: salty, tart, sweet and bitter, according to their quality, their relationship and their quantity.

And so here is a first good habit in regard to pairing. It is good for a wine to soften, sweeten and balance the flavors of a food, in order to help your taste buds to recognize the characteristics of the flavors without stifling them. More simply, food and wine pairings must be based on a contrast between the respective dominating flavors.

At this point, it is important to know how flavors come together and elide between each other.

Flavor table

                * Tart is exalted by bitter and salty, while it is stifled by sweet.

                * Bitter is exalted by salty and acidic, while it is balanced by sweet.

                *Sweet is sometimes balanced by salty and is stifled by tart and bitter.

                * Salty is stifled by sweet but exalted by bitter and tart.

A second aspect involves the methods of pairing which involves the correct rapport that must be established between the structure, body and concentration of a wine and the intensity of a food’s flavors. More simply one could say that, in regard to balancing flavors, pairing must be done to contrast, and when we take into account the quantity of flavors, it is necessary that a similar criterion be used. Foods that have complex and pronounced flavors should thus be paired with wines that have identical characteristics. And thus foods which are delicate and light should be paired with a wine that has a similar structure.

The same argument could be made if we look at cooking times and wine aging. Here we understand the rationale behind certain pairings: beef pot roast and Barolo; stewed wild boar and Brunello di Montalcino and so on. But this rule is, in the end, part of an overall rule. The longer a food marinates and cooks, in fact, the more its flavors are concentrated. And here the overall theory involves practical cases and the question is thus turned upside down and changes, demonstrating that it is much more important to analyze the effects of pairing rather than engaging in academic theory.