Grading Food and Wine Interactions

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From the course by University of California, Davis

Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis

100 ratings

University of California, Davis

Wine Tasting: Sensory Techniques for Wine Analysis

100 ratings

With its roots in ancient cultures as early as 6,000 BC, wine has long been part of the human experience. Today, increasing worldwide interest in wine and its complexities and varieties has created an international market valued at $304 billion annually. For the learner who is just getting started in the study of wine, this course will help you take the first steps toward understanding the physiological process of wine tasting. The first module will explore types of wine and help you set up your own tasting. You’ll also begin to build a sensory vocabulary. In module 2 you will review classic wine types of the world and set up flights of specific wines. Later we’ll examine the various faults and defects that can appear in wine as well as techniques for spotting problems. In week 4 we’ll delve into the complex world of wine and food pairings, and its “seven deadly sins.” The course will culminate in a peer review project in which you will apply the knowledge and sensory techniques you have developed throughout the course to assess a specific wine.

From the lesson

Wine and Food Pairing

Can you drink red wine with fish? In this module we’ll discuss the often perplexing question of how to pair wine with food, and the physical, structural, textural, and aromatic aspects of both the "wine side" and the "food side" of the equation. We’ll discuss ways to improve your ability to make flavorful choices and determine the structure and "weight" of a wine. To help you predict a good food match, we’ll talk about the process of flavor profiling and how to decide whether to change a wine or food to make a pair work. Finally, we’ll discuss the "seven deadly sins" of wine and food pairing, and you’ll develop a personal wine and food scoring system.

Food and Wine Pairing Introduction1:19

Pairing Wine and Foods6:56

Deconstructing the Flavors7:59

Bridging Ingredients4:59

Food Weight6:02

The Cherry Tomato Experiment5:28

Sip, Bite, Sip3:44

Grading Food and Wine Interactions5:09

Meet the Instructors

John Buechsenstein
Wine Appreciation Faculty
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

Welcome back. In our previous lesson we discussed sip, bite, sip.

This lesson marks the conclusion of our module on food and wine pairing principles.

It's also the last lesson of the course.

Thank you for your attention and continuing with me to the end.

In this lesson we will discuss grading food and wine interactions.

A familiar grading system that we all know is A,

B, C, D, E and F, A, B, C, D,

E and F. We'll skip the E and we'll just use A, B, C, D,

F. After you conduct your systematic tasting of

the proposed wine and you test its pairing ability with your sip,

bite, sip routine, it may be useful to grade your results in your notes.

As I mentioned here's a grading system that you could use.

Give it an A if the wine enhances the food flavor and the food enhances the wine flavor.

This is what we call synergy.

A synergistic effect where the combined flavors exceed

what our brain and what our aesthetic judgment felt they would be.

One plus one equals three in other words.

Well I'd give it a B if the wine improves the food flavor or vice versa.

Something in the wine brings out tastes in

the food that might otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Something in the food causes us to perceive more interesting notes on the wine side.

That's a B. One side improves the other side is not harmed.

I'd give the pairing a C or an average score if neither the wine nor

the food stands out but if they

work reasonably well together and not diminish each other.

This is probably how a lot of random or less planned wine and food combinations will work

since as Gerald Usher mentioned in the beginning of the lecture,

there is a huge degree of overlap.

Where there's nothing striking on either side that harms the partner on the other side,

I would give it a C. So I taste the wine,

I take a bite of the food,

the food seems fine but nothing has really changed.

I finish with the food and I go back to a sip of wine.

The wine tastes as it did,

no better, no worse.

So the wine and food are dancing together but they're not winning any particular awards,

they're just behaving themselves.

I'd give it a D if the wine harms the food or vice versa.

If there's some element in the wine's flavor that does something strange or negative

to the food involved but the wine remains OK.

I would give it a D. Or if the opposite occurs where something on

the food side changes the flavor of the wine

in a negative way making the wine seem less appealing.

For example, if the wine is significantly high in

alcohol it could enhance bitterness on the food side or overly

accentuate some chili pepper heat

that's hidden on the food side or some spiciness that we hadn't known was there.

The food side for example if it's so much weightier than the wine side can

really overwhelm and bury the wines flavors just by sheer flavor immensity.

Sometimes the wine almost becomes a glass of water.

Other times umami is the offender here and it tears apart the wine flavor.

When you go back and take that next sip of wine,

you saw that with the cherry tomato example.

Just bear in mind there could be some capsaicin or

some chili pepper hidden heat or spiciness on the food side that we hadn't realized.

I give it an F if both the wine and the food do damage to each other.

If the wine brings out undesirable flavors in

the food and the food has a negative effect on the wine,

then you have a total disaster on your hands.

This concludes our lesson on grading food and wine interactions.

It also concludes our module on food and wine pairing

principles as well as the lecture portion of this course.

Thank you for your interest,

your participation, your attention and for completing this course of study.

I hope that you found it interesting and fulfilling and that you have acquired

the basic skills you need to continue your exploration of the world of wine.

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