Pairing Wine and Food: A Handbook for All Cuisines

by Linda Johnson-Bell

Overview

Matching the right wine to any dish can be the ultimate dining puzzle.  Pairing Wine and Food, with its comprehensive, ready-reference lists of foods and their complementary wines, will show you how.  With hundreds of international dishes listed, and a wealth of wines that go with them best, the book also covers how and why foods and wines taste as they do, and how those tastes blend.              This fully revised book takes the original 1999 edition and updates it for today’s vibrant international culinary atmosphere.  This edition reflects the wider range of wines popular now, from South America, Australia/New Zealand and elsewhere, as well as cuisines such as Thai and Indian that are commonplace for food enthusiasts today.  Also featured are famous contemporary chefs speaking about wine and food pairings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781580805179
Publisher:	Burford Books
Publication date:	05/15/2012
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	489 KB

About the Author

LINDA JOHNSON-BELL is an active wine journalist and panel judge in England and France and is the former editor-in-chief of Vintage International Magazine.  She is a former winner of the Prix Louis Marinier, Bordeaux, for her wine writing.   An American by birth, she has lived in England since 1991.

Table of Contents

Preface to the New Edition ix

Introduction xi

Part 1 The Taste of Wine 1

Learning About Wine 2

What is Taste? 3

How a Good Upbringing Ensures Good Taste 3

What Does Wine Taste Like? 4

The Smells of Wine 7

The Grapes 13

Why are New World Wines Single-Varietal Wines? 25

American AVAs 28

Which Grapes Make Which Wines 34

Major Influences on the Taste of Wine 45

Choices for the Winemaker 52

What Does a Mature Wine Taste Like? 56

How to Taste Wine 57

Can You Taste Wine Faults? 58

Part 2 The Taste of Food 65

From Wine to Food 66

Food's Natural Influences 66

The Manipulation of Food and Wine 67

Cooking and Preparation Methods 68

The Weight of Food 70

The Texture of Food 70

The Importance of Sauces: The Nitty-Gritty of the Issue 71

Spices, Herbs, and Condiments 73

The Spices and Herbs 76

Herbs, Spices, and Wines 86

Matching Herbs, Spices, and Wines 86

A Brief History of American Cooking 87

The Diversity of International Cuisines 90

Matching Food and Wine 96

Mushrooms and Wine 101

Cheese and Wine 102

Alsace: Portrait of a Region 106

Provence: Portrait of a Region 108

Piedmont: Portrait of a Region 109

Part 3 Wines and Foods 111

Food to Wine Index 113

Wine to Food Index 150

Wine Vocabulary 173

Suggested Reading 189

Index 191

Editorial Reviews

This compact and comprehensive work rejects the notion that pairing wine with food is as simplistic as matching red with meat and white with chicken. Rather, it is a dish's flavors--sweet, sour, spicy, and salty--that must guide wine selection. Using this premise, Johnson-Bell, a wine journalist and panel judge, has written a handy guide explaining the tastes and aromas of wine and food and how this knowledge enhances the enjoyment of both. While much of the material has been seen before--e.g., charts of wine smells and varietals--this book makes excellent and unique contributions: a fairly exhaustive cross-referencing of wines and their perfect gastronomical partners (including cheeses and mushrooms), a table matching herbs and spices with wines, and the admission that, in the final analysis, champagne goes with anything. Useful for everyone from beginning oenophiles to restaurateurs, this is a highly recommended bargain for all collections.--Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Daunting, almost. Far broader, studied and wittily annotated than one might ever imagine for the subject. No whimsy here. Nor is there a provincial slant betraying the author as some wine or food industry insider with an eye on promotion. Johnson-Bell, an American residing in London, is ideally suited to this project. Unlike so many New World wine and food writers, her take is evenly cosmopolitan though just slightly (and rightly) partial to the French. She is a former editor-in-chief of Vintage International Magazine, the author of The Wine Collectors Handbook and conveniently, the wife of a top London chef. Along with sturdy descriptions of thirty commonly known grape varieties, a remarkably extensive chart of the particular grape varieties grown within the top 150 wine regions, Johnson-Bell in Part 1, The Taste of Wine, thoroughly dissects the many variables that influence wine flavor including issues such as soil, climate, yeast type used during fermentation, barrel aging, pruning, age of vines, amongst others. Part 2 of the three part book is titled The Taste of Food and the author utilizes the same discerning methodology. In an introduction to a section titled Cooking and Preparation Methods she writes, "'fast, hot and dry' preserves taste, while 'slow, moderate and moist' intensifies flavors. And when it comes to matching wines, a general guideline is that those foods that are prepared with a light method of cooking (poaching or steaming, for example) would usually require a fruity, lightly acidic wine ..." She immediately continues by discussing the ten most used cooking methods and offers generalizations about how certain wines can successfully be paired to cooking methods. Part 3 includes sixty pages of Food to Wine / Wine to Food charts that go into alarming detail suggesting, for example, almond biscuits to be paired with the little known Moscatel de Valencia, or salt cod balls with a white Rioja. The beauty here is in the thoroughness. Anyone familiar with such matters knows that the circumstance is rare when serious food is unaccompanied by a carefully chosen wine and the superlative precision provided in Pairing Wine and Food should serve to blur the divisiveness often found between foodies and grape nuts. At its best, the palate game (played by both food and wine lovers) requires the most honed tasting skills backed by a prodigious memory. Johnson-Bell has contributed a splendid resource for the novice and expert.
—Foreword

Seth McEvoy

The superlative precision provided in Pairing Wine and Food should serve to blur the divisiveness often found between foodies and grape nuts. At its best, the palate game (played by both food and wine lovers) requires the most honed tasting skills backed by a prodigious memory. Johnson-Bell has contributed a splendid resource for the novice and expert.

Foreword Magazine

Much has been written about the interrelationships between food and wine. Johnson-Bell approaches the subject from the perspective of a consumer for whom wine is the central focus. The point of matching foods to wines is primarily one of personal taste, but there are some general guidelines to prevent unpleasant clashing of flavors. As the author points out, the growing popularity of non-European cuisines has made food-wine matching even more problematic. Nevertheless, there are some thoughtful ways to go about picking a wine to accompany those enchiladas or that pad thai. Johnson-Bell writes clearly about how food flavors affect the way wine is perceived and vice versa. For those who want simply some prescriptive advice, this book offers long lists of foods matched to appropriate wines. Her tables of wine names and the grapes that go into them are also useful for reference.

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