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Wine and Food Pairing
Taste Preferences and Experiences
No one would deny that people have different tastes, but sometimes in the wine world this is ignored or forgotten. A wine is declared as "great" or as having an off taste and the next person tasting it is confused because he or she does not perceive the same description.
We do not know all the answers about why some people prefer a particular food or wine while others would shy away from those same foods or wines. Is it genetics in which your taste buds are programmed differently? Or was it the food you were fed growing up? Do your tastes change as you get older or is it just change in preferences from experience? We cannot say with certainty what influences taste, but let us look at some general principles that seem to apply to many people.
The sum of tastes is described in a term called mouth-feel. This is different than the tastes of acid, bitter, salty, sweet and savory that we usually attribute to tongue perception. Mouth-feel describes the interacting sensations of acidity, sweetness, bitterness, flavor, viscosity, heat (temperature), warmth (from spicy pepper), and astringency (from tannins and polyphenols). These interactions result in what is called "balance". The stimuli are often divided into producing "hard" or "soft" mouth-feel.
For example, sweetness, savory, warm (temperature), viscous, low alcohol and fat in foods, would all be described as producing a "soft" mouth-feel. Either wine or foods that are high in acid, salt, tannins, alcohol, hot pepper spiciness or bitterness would produce a "hard" mouth-feel. In general, most people prefer a balanced mouth-feel, most of the time. They prefer equal amounts of hard and soft: acids plus sweetness; tannins plus fat or savory; spicy or bitterness with some sweetness, etc. In technical terms, the sweet elements of a wine (derived from alcohol and polysaccharides) must be in relative balance with the sum of the acidic elements plus the phenolic elements (astringency and bitterness).
Do all people generally like to have hard and soft tastes and mouth-feel equally balanced all of the time? No. Some people like very sweetened lemonade (soft) or sweet tea (soft), coffee with ample cream and/or sugar (soft) while others prefer their lemonade lemony (hard), their tea unsweetened (hard) and their coffee black (hard). At different times we may prefer a vinegar-based salad dressing or marinade with some sugar added (balanced) or a vinaigrette with just vinegar, lemon and salt (hard and unbalanced), or a creamy sweet poppy seed dressing (soft). In other words our own preferences can change and adapt.
Especially for home entertainment, it may be beneficial when recommending wines to a person if you have previously determined whether the person prefers soft, hard or balanced mouth-feel, i.e., southern style sweet tea, coffee with two creams and two sugars (unbalanced soft), unsweetened tea or black coffee (unbalanced hard) or somewhere in between the two extremes (balanced). The sweet tea drinker will probably not be excited by a dry, tannic red wine; a regular black coffee drinker may not relish a white zinfandel wine with its residual sugar.
While balance in wine or in a food is generally desirable, if a food is acidic (hard) or a food is sweet (soft) the wine should match the taste, not counter it. An acidic wine (hard) like a Sauvignon Blanc, would best match the hard taste of a salad with a vinegar-based dressing and thus pair well with it. A less acidic wine such as a Chardonnay that has undergone malolactic fermentation (malic acid which is very hard is converted to lactic acid which is soft like milk) would match a meat with a butter-based sauce (savory) much better than an acidic, unoaked Chardonnay.
While taste in art or taste in clothes may not be in your mouth,
taste for wine and food must be. |
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The Taste of Wine: The Art and Science of Wine Appreciation
Anthony Bourdain on Food
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