The key to matching wine and food isn’t merely "red with red," or "heavy with heavy." It isn’t keeping both the wine and food from the same region and it isn’t just echoing flavors. The key to matching wine and food is about what’s already in the wine and the food.
Wine and food pairings work because elements in the food or wine – things such as acidity, sugar, fat, alcohol, salt and tannin – pair well together or do not.
There’s a reason why you squeeze lemon on an oyster or grate Parmigiano-Reggiano atop a marinara sauce. These combinations do taste good but they work because of the interaction of the lemon’s acidity and the oyster’s saltiness; or the fat in the cheese and the acidity in the sauce. And so it goes with wines and the foods they’re paired with.
When we prepare food, we set the dominant elements. For example, if chicken breasts are seasoned with capers and olives, the dominant factor is salt. If a grilled halibut filet is covered in a mango salsa, the primary element will be sweetness.
Acidity:
Foods high in acidity require a wine with the same degree of acidity. For instance, the perfect match for an acidic salad dressing is a wine high in acidity itself, something like a German Riesling or a well-made Pinot Grigio from northern Italy. You’d be surprised how both the dressing and the wine tame each other down – one acidity, as it were, canceling the other.
Contrarily, wines low in acidity, many an American or Australian chardonnay, for example, get washed away when paired with foods high in acid – citrus salsas, say, or tomatoes or sauces made with lemon juice, capers or vinegar. These wines will taste much better by themselves or when paired with low-acid food preparations.
Salt:
Foods high in salt require either a high acid wine or a wine with marked sweetness. That’s why oysters and Chablis work, or olives and fino sherry. And it’s why salty blue cheese paired with a sweet dessert wine is so ethereal.
A sparkling wine is a great match for salty food—the same principle behind that all-time delicious pair, beer and chips. Tannic reds, oaky whites and low-acid whites are disastrous with salt.
Sweet:
It’s really amazing how much sugar we eat even while we think that we are not. Many prepared foods contain sweeteners (look for ingredients that end in -ose) and contemporary cooking is replete with sweet things (tropical fruit salsas; balsamic reductions; meats stewed with dried fruits).
Sweetness in food requires the same level of sweetness in wine. That’s always made sense with desserts—for instance, pairing an apple tart with a medium-sweet Muscat de Beaume de Venise—but it also holds for main courses.
Off-dry white wines pair very well with sweetness in food; think halibut with a mango salsa or a roast chicken with a butter sauce and caramelized onions.
If red, a wine should be low in tannin and alcohol and fruity to match with sweet foods. Beaujolais is a perfect example. So are some young Pinot Noirs, some reds from Portugal’s Dão region, Chinon and Bourgueil from the Loire. Or any young, fresh, fruity, low tannin red.
On a final note: Keep in mind that sweetness in wine can tame the fire of spicy foods.
Fat:
Tannin and fat are made for each other. An astringent Cabernet Sauvignon works extremely well with the fat that wraps a good steak. In addition, cooking the steak either medium rare or rare is a good idea because blood proteins also tame tannin.
Like sugar, fat is ubiquitous in modern eating, from cheeses to meats to deep-fried food. Hit it with tannin. Also watch out for salt in fatty foods. Tannin aggravates the flavor of salt and salt makes tannin more "tannic." If serving a tannic wine, don’t over salt the food.
Alcohol:
Wines high in alcohol also aggravate salty flavors; they make salt saltier. Also, high-alcohol wines overwhelm delicate or finely etched flavors in food. Many a sauce, deftly made, is wiped off the palate by a wine high in alcohol.
That said, remember that, like sugar and fat, high alcohol content is very common at the American table. California Zinfandels, for example, routinely weigh in at 14-15 percent alcohol. These kinds of wine generally taste best with foods low in salt and high in fat.
In short, the kinds of wines that work best in most situations are low in alcohol, high in acidity, and often off-dry. And it seems that good sparkling wine works with nearly everything.