There is one food and wine pairing that sticks in my memory as being one of the best.  I was in the Veneto in Italy at the famous Amarone producer Masi. They were truly amazing hosts.  At the end of our dinner, our cheese course included aged Parmigiano Reggiano drizzled with acacia honey from the Serego Alighieri Estate and paired with the 2001 Costasera Amarone.  

Why was the food and wine pairing so amazing? I could say “because it worked and complemented each other”, but that doesn’t help you too much. I think the reason why it paired so beautifully is because there were elements in this pairing that connected with every taste your tongue can perceive. You taste sweetness from the honey. The Parmigiano Reggiano has umami, salt and acidity. The Amarone added acidity and bitterness to the equation (appropriately many believe the name Amarone stems from the Italian word for bitter or “amaro”). It had everything  – sweet, sour, salt, bitter and umami – in balance. They came together where no one element stood out above the rest. It was like listening to a symphony where the orchestra sounded as one harmonious unit.

I was reminded of this pairing when I was developing a seminar with Master Chef Ken Arnone for The Society of Wine Educators last month. It was our job to come up with good pairings, bad pairings and the downright ugly. We learned quite a bit from the experience.

What does a good pairing mean? That’s like asking “When do you know you are in love?” You know it when you see it (or in this case, taste it). A good pairing is when the combination of the food and wine creates an entirely new, heightened and pleasing sensation to your palate. The Amarone/Parmigiano Reggiano/Honey pairing did thus that. Individually these elements were good on their own. But when put together, fireworks happened.

We tested other good pairings such as Heirloom tomato salad with sherry vinegar with an Alsatian Gewurztraminer. This worked because the high acid from the tomatoes and the vinegar complemented the low acid from the Gewurztraminer. The acid makes your palate focus on the litchi and spice flavors of this wine and the bold flavors of the Heirloom tomatoes.  

The Gewurztraminer also worked with Master Chef Ken Arnone’s Kung Pao Shrimp. Alsatian Gewurztraminer has enough body to stand up to the power of the spicy Kung Pao sauce.   The wine also had a touch of sweetness to it which calmed the spice down. The same would happen if you paired this dish with a Sauternes. Yum!

Then we had to come up with a bad pairing. Bad pairings aren’t the ugly ones. They are simply the pairings don’t work – not good, but not ugly either. We took, for example, champagne to pair with the heirloom tomato salad with the sherry vinegar. I thought the champagne might bring a cleansing sensation to the dish, but it didn’t. In this case the high acid of the champagne, plus the acid of the tomatoes and the acid of the vinegar yielded an even higher perception of acid on your taste buds. Acid + Acid = More Acid. It wasn’t ugly, but it wasn’t good either. 

Now we come to the ugly pairings. Ugly pairings are the easiest to identify as these are the ones you practically want to spit out. We intended for the Barolo to be ugly with the Kung Pao Shrimp.

Some people in the room were saying “but I like the Barolo with the Kung Pao Shrimp”. I asked them later if they just love Barolo and they said it was their favorite. It’s important to identify the difference between loving a wine and what works with it. You may love Barolo, but understand the wine is doing nothing for the Kung Pao Shrimp and vice versa. In fact, they clash. 

Barolo is made from a very high tannin grape, Nebbiolo, and is generally around 14% level of alcohol. The spice makes the bitterness from the tannin stand out and decreases your impression of the fruit in the wine. The intense spice also makes the level of alcohol stand out so that it tastes much hotter than it is.  All you are left with is bitterness and heat.  

There is one food and wine pairing that is truly ugly. It is also my biggest pet peeve reading articles around Valentine’s Day. Chocolate and champagne. I get why journalists write about them together. They are both luxurious and sensual gifts you can share with your sweetie.

But together they just don’t work! Firstly, the champagne is too light in comparison to the chocolate. Secondly, the chocolate coats your tongue and the acidity from the champagne creates a cleansing sensation, but not in a good way. Rather than a sweet, refreshing taste, the sweetness of the chocolate makes the champagne taste sour. It’s just an ugly pairing. 

We paired the dark chocolate mousse with a ruby port, the Fonseca’s Bin 27. It was delicious! The flavor of the chocolate makes the blackberry, cassis and licorice flavors of the port stand out even more. And because port is a fortified wine, and sweet, it can match the sweetness and the body of the chocolate. Next time Valentine’s Day comes around, get a box of chocolates and a bottle of ruby port for your sweetheart and save the champagne for a night with oysters.

Creating the seminar was a great learning experience. Many of us take it for granted, the lists of things that in theory “work together” without knowing why.  It is also tough to understand what pairs well without understanding what doesn’t pair well. My advice is to intentionally create things that are good, bad and ugly, and see what you come up with. You may be surprised by what you find!

Question for you: What was a really good or really ugly pairing for you?  Let me know!