Foods to Avoid in your Wine Tasting Party
The consensus among those who write about pairing wine and food is that there are some foods that are notoriously difficult to match. Certainly avoid these foods during a wine tasting, but, when you are not in the middle of a tasting, the choice need not be the sacrifice of these foods for a glass of wine or vice versa. Who would want to jettison asparagus in the spring or a good curry from your favorite Indian restaurant? Learn to work around them.
The really challenging foods--those to avoid during your Wine Tasting--are:
- Acidity. Salad with a vinaigrette dressing is a difficult match. The salad can make your wine difficult to taste or to seem dull. Reduce the significance of this problem by serving your salad after the main meal, as many Europeans do or, if changing the order of the courses is not appealing, try eating a piece of bread before sipping your wine. A crisp white like a Sauvignon Blanc or a Riesling would be another very good solution.
- Anchovies. On your pizza with tomato sauce and cheese, a Côte-du-Rhône red or Chianti would go nicely. A pissaladière with onions, olives, and anchovies would take one of those wines as well as a dry, crisp rosé or white. In a Caesar salad, order a Sauvignon Blanc or a Viognier.
- Artichokes. There really is no good match here. When one has the pleasure of having a beautiful whole artichoke placed before him or her, our advice would be to focus on your meal and then enjoy your wine. (If you can't wait, cleanse your palate with a piece of bread.)
- Asparagus. Don't choose a wine that will compete with the strong flavor of this vegetable. Consider Sauvignon Blanc or an un-oaked Chardonnay, unless there is a sauce which would widen your choices.
- Eggs. Egg yolks tend to coat your tongue with, well . . . yolk. Cleanse your palate before sipping your wine. In the case of omelettes and quiche, depending on the other ingredients, number of different wines, both red and white, can work.
- Mint. Very difficult unless served with a lamb, which would then open the door to a number of reds. We always gravitate to Côte-du-Rhône reds, but a Bordeaux or New World Cabernet Sauvignon or a Pinot Noir or Red Burgundy would be lovely, too.
- Spicy. A good match depends on the spice that makes it spicy and the food that is receiving the spice, but there are both reds and wines that can work very well. With chicken curry, try Pinot Gris, Riesling or Sauvignon Blanc. Some people recommend Chardonnay. For Mexican food, consider the wines just mentioned as well as Pinot Noir, Beaujolais, or a Spanish red. Consider sherry or, with very spicy food, beer, too.
