Food & Wine Pairing - First Course

There is so much information out there about pairing food with wine, that it can sometimes get overwhelming.  I finally sat down with all of the notes from my courses, my texts and a few favorite cookbooks to come up with some simple rules to follow while pairing wine and food.  I'll share these rules as we look at each course from our recent wine tasting party.

Starting at the top!  Try testing out these points yourself by grabbing a few different wines, a few different bites and seeing if it makes sense to you.  When I am tasting pairings, I'll always evaluate the wine by itself first (smell and taste) and then see how a food changes the wine by taking a bite, then another sip of wine.

#1 Taste in order: There is a general sequence to follow when tasting: white before red, dry before sweet, light before rich, young before aged.  Follow these rules with your food and menu planning as well by serving lighter dishes first, such as salads, then seafood, then heavier meat dishes.
#2 Be aware of acids: Naturally occurring acids are found in both food and wine.  When pairing, be sure that the acids in the wine meet or exceed the dish.  Pair citrus fruit, goat cheese, tomatoes and vinegar with sauvignon blanc, pinot gris, riesling, and sangiovese.

Rule #1 seems pretty intuitive by this point in time.  White before red is pretty well accepted and it make sense as you start to think about this principle with food.  A small salad or sorbet between courses is often great as a palate refresher (although ususally not paired with wine) although most people won't serve a steamed halibut after steak.  It will throw your palate totally off balance.

For Rule #2, sometimes you have to test this one out for yourself.  Goat cheese is a naturally acidic food.  Try a bite of a good chevre with a sauvignon blanc, and then with merlot.  That merlot is going to seem awfully thin and tart with the residual acids from the food.

So for the first course, we paired the 2010 Semillon with a sesame-crusted salmon with an orange miso sauce.  The light flavors and intensity of the dish certainly didn't overwhelm the wine, or any of the following courses.  The bright acidity in the wine was a great companion to the orange notes in the sauce, while the roundness from the salmon and miso complimented the light oak in the semillon.  See how we're matching profiles?