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.