3 Ways You Know You’ve Found a Perfect Pairing

The right combination of flavors can make or break your dining experience. When the meal is a seamless success, you’ll continue to dream about it for years to come. If it ends up lackluster, you may be hesitant to try those dishes and wines with other combinations for fear of repeating your mistakes. To help alleviate that stress, we have some sommelier insights to help boost your confidence.

Our latest comes from Irene Miller, Beverage Director at Michelin-starred Vestry in Manhattan. She begins her day with a range of tastings. Her sales representatives will bring by various wines she has told them she is interested in, or ones they think will work with the menu and her philosophy. “The food is seafood-based, with a lot of Japanese ingredients,” she explains. “It tends to be fresh and clean. So much of the wine list reflects this as well. I gravitate towards wines that are bright and pure and showcase the terroir from which they came.”

But for whatever food you’ve prepared, to help identify when you’ve found a perfect pairing, Miller shared three things to look for.

Flavors are amplified
It’s important to remember that “with a successful wine pairing, you’re creating something that’s more than the sum of its parts,” she says. “Sometimes I find when I eat something and then take a sip of wine, the flavor of whatever I’m having is amplified. It might be the salinity or the fruit in wine, but somehow, something makes the flavors of the dish pop.” A fresh, basil-tomato sauce on pasta might taste brighter and more herbaceous with the right wine. Amplified flavors can be tricky, though. Sauces play an important part. “The sauce on a dish adds another layer of flavor and texture. A lot of pairing wine is pairing for the sauce,” she continues. “For something like steak au poivre, you get that meaty, mineral tone from the steak and a lot of pepper, so you don’t want a big, tannic wine because it may strip your tongue bare and make everything taste super spicy.”

Your palate feels refreshed
Oftentimes, you may be looking for a wine that will refresh your palate. “For example, if you’re eating a lot of big, rich, heavy food, you’ll want a wine that is bright, one that has some energy and is going to make you want to go back for your next bite.” Of course, you’ll know the times when you haven’t achieved that experience, too, reveals Miller, because there will be an overwhelming bitter taste in your mouth. “I may be eating something delicious, then I drink a wine, and it just ruins the flavor—like a big red wine with a delicate fish. I’m not going to taste what I’m eating anymore because one flavor obliterates the other. People will mistake that for either the food or the wine being bad when it’s really that those two things don’t go together.”

The meal becomes multi-layered
When pairing food and wine, “you might want to add depth” to the flavor of the dish. “There’s a unique note in the wine that’s just going to add a little bit more and complement whatever it is you’re eating.” A bright white wine might pair with an acid-driven sauce, for instance. When a new dish comes on the menu, Miller will often taste it with some of the wines on her list. “However, restaurants don’t have the budget to taste 40 different wines with each dish,” she adds, “which is what makes PairCraft so interesting.”

Subscribe to PairCraft to dive into Irene Miller’s latest pairing for spaghetti with broken cherry tomatoes and see how these principles help her choose the right wines.