With Mother’s Day, graduation parties, wedding season, and Father’s Day all bearing down on us, countless people are quaking at the prospect of having to pick wines to pair with meals for an impending Big Occasion.
My advice? Fear not. Getting tasty, workable matches between wines and foods is actually not very difficult–despite that fact that this task 
has traditionally been over-legislated and treated with absurd fussiness.
Note that I am addressing “tasty, workable” matches rather than “amazing, life-transforming” ones. Truly drop-dead-perfect matches involve interplay between little flavor nuances that require precise knowledge of a particular wine, plus all the ingredients and preparation factors in the food.
However, if you are simply hosting a dinner or a party, you need only come up with nice matches–not earth shattering ones.
And guess what? The happy fact of the matter is that you can achieve a very high rate of success when pairing wines with foods by forgetting one thing and remembering two others:
1) Forget Color: The old rule of pairing white wines with fish and red with meat will, if you think about it, often run afoul of the rule of getting robustness in balance. The fact is that a thick, grilled tuna steak is more robust than thin, sautéed slices of veal tenderloin. Many people will find that a light red like Pinot Noir works much better than a white with that tuna steak, just as a substantial white may be a better choice than a red for the veal.
2) Get Robustness in Balance: A good marriage between wine and food entails an equal partnership in which neither participant dominates the other. If the wine overwhelms the food (as Cabernet overwhelms oysters), the result is a failure. If the wine cannot hold its own with the food (as Sauvignon Blanc cannot hold up to steak), it cannot contribute to an enjoyable match. Balance is our goal, but what exactly are we trying to balance? The robustness of the food and the wine. That is, the sheer “size” and flavor impact of the two must be roughly symmetrical for a good match. This is not so hard to achieve. Anybody who eats can distinguish the differing robustness levels of different foods, and even a novice taster needs just a sip to learn that certain grapes and growing regions produce “bigger” or “smaller” wines that can be sized appropriately to any dish.
3) Tend to Texture: Wines differ from one another in texture, and the texture of a wine isn’t quite the same as its sheer “size.” For example, a Shiraz or Zinfandel can be just as “big” as a Cabernet Sauvignon while nevertheless being much “softer” or “rounder” in texture. Foods also differ quite importantly in texture, and this variable really makes a difference in getting great results from pairings. Interesting textural matches can be either complementary or contrasting. For example, a rich dish like lobster with drawn butter can be matched successfully with a soft, “buttery” Chardonnay that complements its texture, or with a leaner, more “edgy” dry Riesling that offers a textural contrast. If you simply pay attention to texture when making a trial run with your dinner and a promising wine or two, you’ll find it easy to pick the wine that offers the most pleasing pairing.
There’s more to wine pairing than these simple tips, but if you follow them, you’ll not only get through any party that’s looming on your horizon, but do so with enough success to build confidence for more ambitious adventures in the future.
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