The Friday wine column: Expert’s guide to food matching
Matching wine with food is often seen as an elite level of wine expertise, something only for the real pros, so why would anyone who doesn’t know much about wine go there?
First, there’s the additional joy and pleasure you can bring into your life with just a few small changes to something you’re already doing. We drink and eat together all the time, but well-matched wine and food are so much more than the sum of their parts. When you pair food and wine thoughtfully, you elevate two already brilliant things to next-level deliciousness – without necessarily spending much more or going to much additional effort.
It’s also a chance to eliminate a lot of low-level stress. I’ve lost count of the messages I’ve had from friends (hello, everyone) wondering what to serve their in-laws with lunch or what to pick up for a night in with a takeaway and a partner.
But beyond these immediately practical, short term fixes, there’s also the fact that approaching wine through food you love to eat is a great way into a world that can often feel vast, impenetrable and riddled with snobbism.
Plenty of people wish they knew more about wine, but it can be daunting. But thinking about what you’re going to have for dinner? That’s something we all do regularly, and with pleasure. So taking familiar food that you love to cook and eat at home as a starting point will let you get to grips with wine – almost without realising you’re doing it. Because the good news is that if you know what you love to eat – and who doesn’t? – you’re a lot more than half way to learning what you love to drink. After all, it’s still the same process of tasting and enjoying.
Even more helpfully, you’ll start to see that many of the reasons that a certain wine goes brilliantly with a certain food are based on principles you probably already understand instinctively when it comes to food: the fact that fish tastes great with lemon, or that there’s nothing more moreish than a combination of salty and sweet.
Basically, if you want to get more knowledgeable and comfortable around wine, food can be your gateway drug.
In a bid to show how fun and interactive food & wine pairing can be you can now buy tickets for a ‘Snack Battle’. You’ll get six wines, snacks and link to join the online tasting and get involved in the tasting.