Definition: Pairing wine and food: in what order?

Pairing wine with food and choosing the right order is an art. Organising a meal with the hostess is a wonderful adventure, but the slightest mistake can be unsettling for the guests. The first challenge is to find the right order in which to serve the wines. How can you ensure consistency? Here are a few basics.

The fundamentals

Find a common thread. There are three essential rules that must never be overlooked and must be followed when organising a meal:

1. Find a guiding principle to ensure the tasting is consistent.

2. Never forget that your taste buds are the magnets for flavours and your sensations.

3. Never regret a wine you have previously tasted.

By following these three rules, you give yourself a real chance of success.

The logical progression – the common misconception

Very often, novices will save the oldest wine, which is often the most prestigious and the best in their eyes, for the end of the meal. Under the pretext that this wine is a relic, we imagine that its place is at the end of the tasting, like a grand finale. Given its age, this wine will certainly offer a very complex bouquet, but with much less density and concentration (volume) than young wines or those approaching maturity.If you taste young, lively, intense wines, then mature wines at their peak, you will quickly notice that the last wine, let's say "the most venerable", will seem rather flat. You will not favour it and tasting it will have lost some of its meaning and logic due to this choice.

What order and what criteria?

The first thing to bear in mind is to allow your taste buds to sharpen and become excited as you taste, so that they never become saturated.

First essential point:

If there were a single classic rule to follow, it would be to respect the following tasting order, depending on the accompanying dishes:

• Sparkling wines,• white wines,• red wines,• sweet wines,• brandy."

Second important point:

Never regret the wine you have just tasted. The last wine is the highlight of the tasting. The first wine will get the tasting started, tease the taste buds and set the stage for the wines that follow. Remember, this is the role of the aperitif and its effect on the taste buds.

Conclusion:

By following these principles, namely serving wines in order of colour and texture and moving upmarket as the meal progresses, you can create a logical thread. Your guests will appreciate the relevance and logic of such a crescendo. In their eyes, you will be an insider.