FOOD & WINE PAIRING

FOOD & WINE PAIRING

Wine and food matching is the process of pairing food dishes with wine to enhance the dining experience. In many cultures, wine has had a long history of being a staple at the dinner table and in some ways both the winemaking and culinary traditions of a region will have evolved together over the years. Rather than following a set of rules, local cuisines were paired simply with local wines. The modern "art" of food pairings is a relatively recent phenomenon, fostering an industry of books and media with guidelines for pairings of particular foods and wine. In the restaurant industry, sommeliers are often present to make food pairing recommendations for the guest. The main concept behind pairings is that certain elements (such as texture and flavor) in both food and wine react differently to each other and finding the right combination of these elements will make the entire dining experience more enjoyable. However, taste and enjoyment are very subjective and what may be a "textbook perfect" pairing for one taster could be less enjoyable to another.

Foods and wines are matched in the exact same way as the way they are tasted: on the palate, where it comes together. In other words, you match wine the same way that you match anything that tastes good together.

Take, for instance, a large scoop of icy cold, creamy sweet vanilla ice cream, which is made all the better with a generous scoop of hot chocolate syrup. The match works because both are soft and sweet, and the chocolate adds its own unique flavor ("chocolate!") plus a fun, contrasting sensation (hot vs. cold)

STYLES OF VERMOUTH

There are three general styles of vermouth, in order from driest to sweetest: extra dry, bianco/white, and sweet/red.

 Sweet red vermouth is drunk as an apéritif, often straight up, as well as in mixed drinks like the Manhattan. Dry white vermouth, along with gin, is a key ingredient in the mixing of martinis. Red vermouths are sometimes referred to as Italian vermouths and white vermouths as French vermouths, although not all Italian vermouths are red and not all French vermouths are white.

VERMOUTH

Vermouth is a fortified wine, flavored with aromatic herbs and spices ("aromatized" in the trade) such as cardamom, cinnamon, marjoram and chamomile. Some vermouth is sweetened; however, unsweetened, or dry, vermouth tends to be bitter. The person credited with the second vermouth recipe, Antonio Benedetto Carpano from Turin, Italy, chose to name his concoction "vermouth" in 1786 because he was inspired by a German wine flavoured with wormwood, an herb most famously used in distilling absinthe. The modern German word Wermut (also spelled Wermuth) means both wormwood and vermouth. The herbs in vermouth were originally used to mask raw flavours of cheaper wines, imparting a slightly medicinal "tonic" flavour.

STYLES OF MADEIRA

Reserve (5 years)- This is the minimum amount of aging that a wine labeled with one of the noble varieties is permitted to have.

Special Reserve(10 years)-At this point the wines are often aged naturally without any artificial heat source.

Extra Reserve (over 15 years)-This style is rare to produce with many producers extending the aging to 20 years for a vintage or producing a "colheita". It is richer in style than a Special Reserve Madeira.

Colheita or Harvest-This style includes wines from a single vintage but aged for a shorter period than true Vintage Madeira. The wine can be labeled with a vintage date but include the word "colheita" on it.

Vintage or Frasquiera-This style must be aged at least 20 years

TYPES OF MADEIRA

There are four major types of Madeira, named according to the grape variety used. Ranging from the sweetest to the driest style, they are:

v Malvasia (also known as Malmsey or Malvazia)

v Bual or Boal

v Verdelho

v Sercial 

MADEIRA

Madeira is a fortified Portuguese wine made in the Madeira Islands. The wine is produced in a variety of styles ranging from dry wines which can be consumed on their own as an aperitif, to sweet wines more usually consumed with dessert. Cheaper versions are often flavored with salt and pepper for use in cooking. The islands of Madeira have a long winemaking history dating back to the Age of Exploration when Madeira was a standard port of call for ships heading to the New World or East Indies. To prevent the wine from spoiling, neutral grape spirits were added. On the long sea voyages, the wines would be exposed to excessive heat and movement which transformed the flavor of the wine as the wine producers of Madeira found out when an unsold shipment of wine returned to the islands after a round trip. Today, Madeira is noted for its unique winemaking process which involves heating the wine up to temperatures as high as 60°C (140°F) for an extended period of time and deliberately exposing the wine to some levels of oxidation. Due to this unique process, Madeira is a very robust wine that can be quite long lived even after being opened.