Acidity

Acidity is the lemon squeeze of the wine world. It magnifies flavors, it brightens, it lightens, it almost makes the sun shine. Acidity cuts through fat like a knife. Think of that lemon squeeze over a fish fry; replace the lemon with a bright, crisp white wine, and the effect is very similar. It makes the heavy flavors feel livelier, and more importantly, it scrapes the film of fat off the taste buds so that they won’t get fatigued.

Acid will also magnify elements that don’t need magnifying—tannin, for instance. Pour a tannic red wine with an acid-rich sausage-and-sauerkraut dish, and every time the acid and wine combine the wine will seem extraordinarily tannic.

What works: High-acid wines with high-acid foods, or fat

What to avoid: High-acid wines with tannin

Oak

Wood has no equivalent in food, except for maybe those rare occasions when you’re having cedar-planked salmon. The flavors oak adds to wine range from near-nothing (in which case it’s no worry) to heavy vanilla and butterscotch notes. It also can add a little of its own tannin, a challenge covered previously under “Tannin.”

It’s the sweet vanilla, toast, and butterscotch flavors that are a concern. If the flavors are light, they might not interfere with the flavors in food, especially if the food itself is a little sweet or smoky, like, say, grilled tuna with mango relish.

If they are heavy, they’ll need a very rich dish to stand up to them, like barbecued brisket with sweet sauce for an oaky Shiraz.

Beware of salt when it comes to oaky wines, too, unless you want to taste even more of the oak and emphasize its tannins.

What works: Oaky wines with sweet or smoky dishes

What to avoid: Oaky wines and salty food, delicate flavors

As you can see, the reactions between food and wine can be dynamic. Knowing them can help you make sure the dynamic is a good one. Still, sometimes you’ll hit it and sometimes you won’t; not even sommeliers get it right every time. Worse things could happen. After all, it’s just dinner and a glass of wine.

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Sometimes it’s easier to think about what the wine will do for the dish, rather than what the dish needs in a wine. For wine, you have just four basic things to worry about: tannin, alcohol, acidity, and oak.

Tannin

You won’t find much tannin in food, but it’s an important element to keep in mind when it comes to wine. Tannin dries out the mouth. The feeling can be pleasant, a light grip that keeps the wine’s flavors lingering, or it can be like super-strength Velcro, leaving the tongue feeling dry and fuzzy. You can use tannin’s power to your advantage with food—and it can also do some damage.

Tannin loves protein; it literally binds to it. If you drink a tannic wine without any food, the tannin will have nothing to bind to but the protein in your saliva—and thus the unpleasant drying feeling.

However, give that wine a steak to sink its tannin into, and the tannin will leave your tongue alone. They’ll work almost like tenderizers on the steak, making it go down more easily.

Since tannic wines usually have lots of flavor, they typically have the oomph to cut through super-rich dishes like blue-cheese burgers or cheesy, meaty lasagna. Sic those tannins on a popcorn shrimp, though, and they’ll destroy the little guy by sheer overwhelming power. Think of tannin as a wine’s muscles, and be careful with what it flexes them on.

The shrimp’s briny notes won’t do it any favors, either: Just as salt enhances flavors, it accentuates tannin, too. If you don’t want a wine to taste any more tannic than it already is, go easy on the salty foods.

What works: Tannin with protein (think steak or cheese) and big flavors

What to avoid: Tannin with delicate foods and salt

Alcohol

Alcohol falls only on the wine side of the food-and-wine equation, but it’s important to know how food can affect it. Alcohol stokes a fire in a wine, one that’s usually kept under wraps by the wine’s own sweet, ripe fruit flavors. Toss a hot pepper into a dish, though, and when the wine and pepper meet, a bonfire might start on your tongue, so keep some bread handy or, better yet, avoid fiery foods and wines with high alcohol. Opt for something lightly sweet and low-alcohol instead, like a German Riesling or a white Zinfandel.

Alcohol can also ignite a fight with salt, which will bring out the heat of a wine in a white pepper-like burn. In most foods, there are mitigating elements that keep this from being a problem, but if the dish of the evening is Chinese salt-and-pepper squid, a 15 percent alcohol Viognier is not a good bet.

High-alcohol wines are usually high in flavor, too, and they’ll often have a slightly thicker texture. This is excellent when the match in mind is something as rich as salmon with a cream sauce, but delicate dishes can get lost under that thick blanket of flavor.

What works: High-alcohol wines with fatty, flavorful food

What to avoid: High-alcohol wines and salty food or spicy-hot dishes, delicate dishes

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