How To Grow Your Hospitality Business
Excerpt 3
More Food and Wine

Beyond understanding the flavours of the wine, there are certain generally accepted rules that underlie the process of matching food and wine. How you follow these rules depends on your confidence with the wine match. If you know it works well but involves an unusual combination, just do it! Brillat Savarin, the famous French gourmand talks in his book, The Physiology of Taste (1825) about many of the concepts listed below.

1. White wine with white meat and fish; Red wines with red meat.
   If in doubt follow this rule. If however you are serving chicken with a heavy red wine sauce (port and mushroom cream), then it is appropriate to use a red wine to match.
2. Replicate the flavours of the wine in the food.
   It is often easier to choose the wine first and build a menu to match.
3. Start with the lightest wines working to the most full bodied.
   Méthode traditonelle - canapés
   Chardonnay - monk fish with vanilla beurre blanc
   Merlot - fillet steak with mustard and red wine jus
   Noble riesling - rata honey crème brûlée
4. Food with a lot of fat should be matched with a dry wine with good acidity.
5. Delicate food should be matched with delicate wines.
6. Richly flavoured food should be matched with full bodied wines.
7. White wines and Méthodes should be served chilled.
   In winter it is important not to over chill the wines and often room temperature will be quite acceptable.
8. Decant red wines.
   Young full bodied tannic wines are greatly helped by decanting into a jug. The wine can then be poured back into a bottle. This process can oxidise the wine sufficiently to open up the flavours.
9. Méthode traditonelle.
   This style of wine makes an excellent alternative to a dessert wine or port. It can provide a satisfactory match for a chocolate dessert. Serving bubbles at the conclusion to a meal will facilitate the party!
10. Have a beer.
    For food with a lot chillies and spice it better to enjoy the taste sensation and forget about a wine. Wine with spicy food compromises the quality of the wine. Chilli alters the sensitivity of your palate.

Wine Temperature
The colder the wine, the faster you will drink it. It dulls the taste buds. Because of this chilling wine will improve sales as consumers will drink more if the wine is well chilled. Think of how you react to a warm beer, the flavour is so much stronger that is difficult to quench a thirst. This is the same for wine. Unchilled wine tastes completely different from the chilled option. Do not be afraid to serve white wine like chardonnay or riesling at a warmer temperature because you will taste far more of the wine's flavours.

Recommended Temperatures

• Dessert and sparking wines 4-8°C
• White wines 8-12°C
• Red wines and Port 18-20°C

Decanting
As red wine ages, sediment starts to settle in the bottom of the bottle. When serving red wine, decanting into a jug will achieve two things. Firstly the sediment will be poured off and secondly, the oxidation that happens during decanting will open the wine so that the flavours will be more apparent. Uncorking a bottle only serves to oxidise the small portion of the neck that is open to the air. Young full bodied tannic wines are greatly helped by decanting.

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