“Pairing wine and food is an art, not a science.”

As you start your journey into drinking wine, it will become apparent really fast that pairing food and wine is necessary in order to truly get the full experience of a wine and to complement a meal the best way possible. In general, we recommend drink and eat what you like. However, if you take some easy steps when choosing which food or wine to consume, your experience will be enhanced like no other.

Pairing Food & Wine Basics

Our goal is to help others learn how to enjoy wine the best way possible. A critical part of enjoying wine to the fullest is to pair it with the food you are eating to enhance both the food and the wine. Here are a list of things to consider when pairing wine with your food (or visa versa).
    1. Red wines tend to pair best with meats with strong flavors, usually red meats.
    1. White wines tend to pair best with lighter flavored meals and meat, like chicken & seafood.
    1. Try to pair the wine with the sauce on the meat, rather than the meat on dishes where there is a lot of sauce (like pasta)
    1. Meals with high acidity (like tomato based pasta sauce) should be paired with wines with high acidity.
    1. Fatty foods pair best with bitter wines (like a ribeye and a cabernet)
    1. Sweet wines go well with sweet food (like dessert wines)
    1. There are two ways to pair wine and food, congruent (wine & dish share flavors) and complementary (do not share flavors).
Congruent – this is typically a red wine that is paired with a dish. The flavors in the wine and the food are both elevated this way. But remember that the food should never overpower the wine, otherwise the wine will just taste bland and very underwhelming. Complementary – these combinations of wine and food share no flavors, but they do complement each other. A good example of this is a sweet wine paired with a spicy dish. The sweetness will tone down the spiciness and the flavors in both the wine and the dish will be enhanced.

Pair By Wine Type

Pair By Food Type

Pair By Region

Pairing Wine With Ribeyes & Prime Rib

Pairing Wine With Cigars

Pairing Wine With Chocolate

Food & Wine Pairings To Avoid

There are some pairings that do not go well together and can actually make the food and the wine taste worse. In these scenarios you would be better off to just drink water or a different drink with the meal, and then enjoy the glass of wine after the meal. Unless you can find a wine that does go well with your meal. Learn more about which pairings don’t go well together above.
Pairing Wine With Liver
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Liver & bacon: one of the original unlikely pairings of food. When pairing a wine with these partners, the variety can be on opposite ends of the spectrum, but also open up a world of possibilities in achieving the maximum … Read More

Pairing Wine With Hummus
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Middle Eastern food is some of the most sophisticated flavor profiles you can ever encounter in your discovery of great food and culture. The centerpiece comfort food of this will always be known as Hummus. Usually known as a simple … Read More

Pairing Wine With Goat Cheese
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Goat cheese is one of the oldest cheeses in the world, dating back 10,000 years to the domestication of goats, and popularized in the Loire Valley. It’s typically softer than cow’s milk, but has more fat, and the abundance of … Read More

Pairing Wine With Gjetost Cheese
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Gjetost, pronounced “yay-toast”, is a Norwegian cheese and also goes by the name “brunost”, meaning “brown cheese” in Norwegian. This semi-firm cheese is made from goat and cow’s milk. It is known for its caramel color and sweet, butterscotch and … Read More

Pairing Wine With Tofu
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Contrary to popular belief, tofu isn’t just for vegans. This nutrient-dense food originated in China, and is made from condensed soy milk that undergoes a process similar to that of cheese, pressing the soy into solid blocks that vary in … Read More

Pairing Wine With Spam
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Spam. The pink, salty, fatty, pressed meat in a can. For those uninitiated, Spam is a ham product produced by Hormel and introduced in 1937. It became popular world-wide during World War II, as it was easily shipped and could … Read More

Pairing Wine With Blue Cheese
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Blue Cheese is widely considered to be one of the most difficult foods to pair with wine. Whether it’s Roquefort, Stilton or Gorgonzola, every blue cheese comes with an extremely salty, pungent flavor that can easily overpower or clash with … Read More

Pairing Wine With Fondue
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At its most basic level, fondue is a pot of warm, bubbly cheese in which pieces of bread, meat, or vegetables on skewers are dunked. This national dish of Switzerland consists of Emmental, also known as Swiss cheese outside of … Read More

Pairing Wine With Venison
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Venison is truly at the upper end of the scale when it comes to meat dishes. It’s a great opportunity to pull out the big guns, the premium wines that can only be paired with lean, intense game meat. Its … Read More

Pairing Wine With Sardines
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Sardines are best known for all of the nutrition that they contain, rather than their flavor or fine dining potential. However, when you start exploring outside of the tinned, supermarket sardine offerings, there is some promise. Fresh sardines taste like … Read More

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