2 Oz vs the Whole Bottle

One of my personal wine concepts is that I regard any wine tasting done without food to be unhelpful. Well, I guess that there are some who would want wine that they just sip. I do not have much to say to that person. I think that if the person enjoys the experience, they should go for it. Get your pleasure as you choose. I would mention that the wine that holds up by itself over a period of time may be too strong to go well with food. To that person I would suggest that they may need both sipping wine and eating wine, assuming that they want to taste the food. I am not opposed to drinking a still wine by itself. I am just suggesting that if it has the flavor to carry itself for several glasses, there will be few foods that it will work well with.So you have a wine that you are going to drink with dinner. You open it, look at it, sniff it, and then sip and drink, what ever your tasting process is. Now these steps bring you a certain result and pleasure. I enjoy this process. It is the introduction to the wine and gives you some ideas. Maybe the wine is red and needs to develop some before dinner, a process interesting to watch.

Yet, the first couple of ounces of a wine really tell you little. It is the food that will actually be the test. From my own experience and what I have read, wines that seem similar because of their initial tasting characteristics may not taste the same with food. There is a lot you can tell from the initial solo tasting, but you may not know what is going to happen next.

I have tasted wines that seemed fine and then ruined the dinner that I would have expected them to enhance. I have tasted wines that were tasteless, bland, or ugly that did, in fact, make the dinner memorable.

But, there is more.

You might argue that a good wine will not taste bad with a meal and that its quality assures you of enjoyment. I will not disagree, at least not strongly. Yet, this isn’t the point. I think that many stop tasting the wine after the initial sips, or approach the wine as an entirely separate part of the meal. It isn’t.

What I want to draw your attention to is something that I have rarely seen mentioned. It is instructive and fun to carefully (this is part of the fun of wine, don’t get too serious) taste your wine with different parts of your meal in isolation. I mean, if you are eating a meat dish, taste the wine with the meat by itself, with the sauce, with the meat and sauce, with the vegetables (perhaps with each vegetable separately), with bread alone. See how the wine changes. See how different tastes are highlighted or underscored. One wonderful thing about this is that it helps you train your sense of taste. Experiencing these taste differences also gives greater depth to your meal. It also shows why having wine with your meal makes so much sense! Praise those wonderful people who figured this all out millennia ago! Pay attention to your taste buds for each set of combinations. Enjoy all that the wine can bring to your meal.

Wine is so much more than that first couple of ounces. I wonder why that is all we see written about? There are some who say that they are talking about food and wine, but all I see tends to be wine, with food as an after thought. (Many food writers, especially in the US act as if wine does not exist.) But it is the pairing that is magic.