Piquant Spice

Piquant spices, like chiles and pepper, add a bright, lively accent to foods. They also create a burning sensation on the tongue. To balance out spicy foods we often pair them with sweet notes: sweet and spicy Szechuan chicken, for instance, or sweet-hot barbecue sauce.

Wine can work with spice in the same way; use a sweeter wine to tamp down the fire. However, too much alcohol or too much spice, and the combination can start a bonfire in your mouth.

Tannin doesn’t do anything nice in the presence of spicy foods, either. Your tongue is already burning up; it needs something as quenching as a fire hose, not as parching as tannin’s drying effects.

What works: Piquant spice and sweetness

What to avoid: Piquant spice and alcohol, tannin

Sweetness

Sugar enhances flavors, magnifying them and making them feel softer and gentler (think of black versus sugared coffee). Sugar is tricky when it comes to matching wines, though—if the wine is too sweet, the combination can be cloying; if it’s too dry, the dessert will seem sweeter and the wine drier; neither item wins.

The answer? With desserts, look for wines that have plenty of acidity as well as sweetness; the acidity will help keep the overall sweetness in balance.

With savory dishes that have a sweet edge, like barbecued brisket with sweet sauce, that sweetness wants a wine that’s similarly balanced between sweet and savory— something soft and ripe, like an affordable California Zinfandel or Aussie Shiraz. Here, heavy tannin would only feel violent and miserly next to such sweetness.

What works: Sweet foods and sweet, high-acid wines or savory wines with ripe, soft flavors

What to avoid: Sweet foods and low acid or heavy tannin

Acidity

Acid is tough on wine; after all, its most frequent appearance in food is in salad, as vinegar, wine’s mortal enemy. Generally, it’s best to avoid highly acidic foods when you want to drink wine, but if you’re going to do it, and we all are, then fight acidity with acidity, and find a wine with the acidity to match.

Otherwise, the acidity in the dish will slay a soft wine, making it feel flabby in comparison.

What works: Acidity with acidity

What to avoid: Acidity without acidity