Wine with food

There are some foods that do not combine well with any kind of wine; these include anything dressed with vinegar or large quantities of lemon juice, pickled foods, egg dishes, anything heavily spiced with chilli or curry, and chocolate.

When planning what wines to serve choose according to the sauces to be used and method of cooking.

• A sauce of white wine, cream and mushrooms, for example, needs to be eaten with an assertive white wine such as an "Entre-Deux-Mers" or a white Burgandy.
• Sauces made from horseadish or mint diminish the taste of fine wines - match them with a robust, everyday wine such as a Muscadet or a Dáo.
  
• Fried dishes or fatty meats need robust wines to cut across the fat and freshen the pallet; a white Spanish or Italian wine goes well with fish and a good red Burgundy goes with fatty Poultry

Basic dishes such as casserole or stew are best served with a straight forward red wine. Goulash for example is good with a strong red such as Hungarian Bulls blood; a white meat stew goes with a light red - a Merlot or Gamay, for example.

Serving Tips

Serve dry wine before sweet, because you are unlikely to enjoy the dry wine after eating or drinking something even slightly sweet.

If you are serving the same wine throughout the meal, offer young before old. Go from the lightest to the heaviest wines, always serve the finest last.

Shellfish are usually served with chilled dry white or Rose wines.

Fish dishes also go well with rose or pink wines. but depends on the flavor of the fish. fish of subtle flavour such as trout need a delicae wine such as an Anjou rose or a Riesling: stronger tasting fish need weightier wines such as a white Burgundy or Rioja.

Poultry can be accopanied by red or white wines in France duck and goose are frequently served with a red Burgundy or Bordeaux (claret), although they also go well with a Gewurztraminer or a Riesling.

As a rule of thumb choose the wine for the meat according to the strenght of the flavour and accompaniments - a light wine for lighter flavour and simple stuffing. a stonger wine for richer ones.

Beer and food made easy

Pale Ales - Salads, light appetizers, fish and seafood

India Pale Ales (IPAs) - IPAs can stand up to a little more richness and flavor. They can go well with things like pulled pork, pizza, and fried chicken, as well as lighter salads and seafood dishes. And if you like heat, try an IPA with spicy food - the hoppiness really pumps up the spice quotient!

Hefeweizens and Wheat Beers - Fruit dishes, dinner salads, grain salads, and desserts made with warm spices (cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg).

Amber Ales - Ambers are a good middle-of-the-road beer and go well with just about anything: burgers, grilled cheese, roast chicken, soups and stews

Stouts and Porters - Barbecue, stews, braised dishes - any kind of meat dish, really. Also rich desserts with chocolate and espresso flavors.

Drink + Food = Awesome

JOHN WILSON

BEER: When matching beer with food there are very few absolute disasters, so you can have lots of fun trying out combinations

THE TRADITIONAL IRISH pub was never noted as a centre of culinary excellence. If you fancied meeting up for a chat, to watch the match or listen to music, there was nowhere better, but any request for food beyond a packet of cheese and onion was likely to be viewed with suspicion. Times have moved on, and most pubs are now keen to supply you with a plate of grub, particularly at lunchtime, when few people now think of downing a pint. The quality of the food varies, but some pubs now make a real effort, and have been rewarded with a very brisk midday trade. These days we even have a gastropub or two to try out, but here we are often encouraged to drink wine with food rather than beer. We know that beer goes with pizza, curry and barbecues, but maybe now is the time to expand our repertoire of beer and food matches?

On the European mainland beer is considered a natural accompaniment to food. Most northern European countries drink it with their meal in the same manner as those further south consume wine. Ask for anything other than an Altbier (a red ale with real flavour) to wash down your Schweinshaxe or Bratwürst in the brew pubs of Düsseldorf, and you will be treated with contempt by the waiting staff. A few kilometres further south in Cologne, the local Kölsch beer, lighter and more floral, is considered the only thing to drink with the area’s excellent black pudding. A Pilsner of some sort is an essential part of the Danish lunch, sitting alongside a chaser of aquavit to wash down all those herrings and other goodies.

But what beer to drink with what food? Even more than with wine, I am convinced there are very few absolute disasters, so you can have lots of fun trying out all sorts of combinations to see if they work. We are already familiar with a few perfect partners; stout and oysters, for one, is a triumph. I am very fond of the English ploughman’s: a plate of cheddar-style cheese, pickles and good bread with a pint of light ale. I have also tried stout and beef stew, and stout with chocolate, too – both a success. A friend who has done a bit of study on the subject advised me to think of darker beers as similar to red wine, full of flavour and quite powerful, and therefore better with red meats, stews and hard cheeses. Lagers and light-coloured beers tend to be more delicate in flavour, so think of these as white wine, to match with chicken and fish.

Dean McGuinness of Premier International Beers gives two other rules of thumb: the stronger and more characterful the beer, the greater the need to have richer, stronger food. The opposite also applies with delicate food – go for a lower-alcohol beer. He also suggests that the spicier the food, the less hoppy the beer – the bitterness of beer can really jar with spices.

THE EXPERTS’ CHOICE

I asked three beer experts to come up with their favourite beer and food matches:

Tripel Karmeliet and roast pork

Aidan Redmond and his brother Jimmy have a passion for beer, and one of the finest selections in the country in Redmond’s of Ranelagh. Jimmy went for roast pork (preferably with the crackling to enhance the sweetness), alongside a bottle of Tripel Karmeliet, a Belgian Trappist-style beer. “It’s a big beer , very robust, but very smooth, with lovely fruit. There is a natural sweetness, which works perfectly with your apple sauce. As with all Belgian beers, it must be drunk from a proper glass, or failing that a wine glass, to get the full flavour.” Tripel Karmeliet is available from specialist beer outlets (€8.50 for 75cl bottle, €3.25 for 33cl).

Chimay Blue and Cashel Blue

Dean McGuinness works with Premier International Beers, the leading importers of speciality beers from around the world. He also has 15 years’ brewing experience. He can be heard on Movies and Booze, a feature on Moncrieff on Newstalk every second Friday afternoon. “I have chosen Cashel Blue with Chimay Blue as my favourite match. The rich, port-like flavours in the Chimay Blue perfectly complement the depth and complexity and subtle, rich character of Cashel Blue. Chimay make their own cheeses in the monastery, so all of the Trappist beers are well suited to go with cheese.” For the more adventurous, there is a range of three Chimay beers to try out. Chimay Blue is widely available in off-licences and some supermarkets. It is 9 per cent alcohol; some outlets stock a gift pack containing the three types. Otherwise, it can be ordered online from www.realbeers.ie, who stock a range of 200 beers online.

Guinness and Belgian chocolate

Marc Stroobandt is a renowned beer expert who works with the Beer Naturally campaign. He will be in Dublin to deliver a series of his highly regarded beer-and-food matching sessions at the Beer Naturally Academy at the Taste of Dublin festival (June 11th to 14th). The Beer Naturally website (www.beernaturally.ie) is worth a look. “I have combined two great traditions: Guinness with a Belgian dark chocolate tart. The two help each other out very nicely; the stout takes away the edge of the dark chocolate in the tart, and brings out the cocoa flavour, whereas the taste smooths out the bitterness of the Guinness. Taken together your senses get this amazing succession of beer, chocolate, beer, chocolate.” Will any Dublin pubs try this out?

jwilson@irishtimes.com

FOUR BEERS TO MATCH WITH FOOD

Budejovicky Budvar (Czech Republic)

5 per cent, €2.69 for a 50cl bottle.

Lager is supposed to go well with curry, but I find some wines are a better match. It is great with chicken dishes, hams, salads and other lighter foods, where freshness and acidity is called for.

Hoegaarden (Belgium)

4.9 per cent, €2.39 for a 33cl bottle.

Hoegaarden is a wheat beer, flavoured with spices – coriander in particular – and orange too. It is naturally cloudy. With its spicy, fruity notes, wheat beer is a great summer drink. It is also very versatile with food, one of the few drinks to hold its own with both eggs and smoked bacon, making it the perfect brunch drink. Wheat beers tend to be light and floral, so go very nicely with fish and seafood, as well as spicy Thai and Indian food – so long as they are not too hot.

Fuller’s London Pride (UK)

4.7 per cent, €2.80 for a 50cl bottle.

The English are famed for their cask-conditioned ales, served at room temperature. Some are amazingly complex, delicious to drink, with a characteristic bitter finish. A lighter ale is a very good thirst-quencher with spicy food from India and elsewhere.

Guinness Extra Stout

4.2 per cent, around €2 per 50cl bottle.

What should we eat with the national drink? As well as oysters, the dry hoppiness of stout also goes well with other seafood. I can also see myself tucking into a beef casserole (made with stout) or a hearty pie (steak and kidney would be perfect). If it is not too dry, the natural cocoa element in stout can be the perfect match for good dark chocolate.

Irish Stouts

This list comes from John Wilson of the Irish times

Marks & Spencer Irish Stout

€3.29 for 500ml, €6.58 per litre

Highs : Buying stout from M&S is like buying a bowler hat and brolly in Guineys, so we were very suspicious when we happened across this bottle. Despite in-built and entirely irrational prejudices about the “brewed in Éire” on the label, we were surprised by how good this was. Its taste, the bottle tells us, “was said to make grown men weep for more”! We didn’t weep but could certainly have downed a couple more bottles. It is a completely different product from the canned stouts we reviewed. It smells very strongly of hops and has a lovely smooth finish and strong flavours.

Lows : While it would accompany a plate of strong cheddar nicely, we’re not sure how well it would go down on a night in watching the football. Apart from the whole Éire problem, we were also concerned with the price.

Verdict : Nice but pricey.

Star Rating: * * *

Murphys

€2.19 for 500ml, €4.38 per litre

Highs : This Cork stout runs Guinness surprisingly close in the creamy head (and in the creamy rings left around a pint glass) stakes. It is very smooth and easy to drink with a lightness not to be found anywhere else. It has slightly sweet undertones, thanks to the presence of chocolate malt in the mix, and a hoppy aftertaste that lingers. An easier introduction to stout than some of the more robust-flavoured stouts on the market. It has the lowest alcohol content – a plus or minus depending on your perspective – but we consider it a plus.

Lows : It doesn’t matter if you have this in draught or from a can, it is hard to get away from the fact that (Cork people look away now) it is thinner and more watery than the product which comes out of St James’s Gate.

Verdict: Just a little thin.

Star Rating: * *

Guinness

€1.77 for 330ml, €5.36 per litre

Highs : There is a lot to be said for familiarity and before we had even popped open this stubby can with its gassy widget, we were feeling sufficiently well-disposed to almost ignore the fact that it was significantly pricier than many of its peers (although, to be fair, it does cost less when bought in the 500ml cans). To say this product has a long tradition is something of an understatement. The 330ml can has a distinct advantage in that it fits into a pint glass without any overspill. It also tastes fuller, with the roasted malt flavours coming through strongly, and is richer than the canned competition. It has a creamy head which stays in place for the duration.

Lows : It is comparatively expensive and too easy to drink too much of it.

Verdict : Best from a can.

Star Rating: * * * *

Beamish

€1.76 for 500ml, €3.52 per litre

Highs : Beamish has been brewed in a fairly small Cork brewery for a very long time, although we won’t be able to say that for much longer as its parent company, Heineken, is moving production to the brewery where Murphys is made. It deserves kudos for being the cheapest of the stouts we tried. It comes out frothy and its bitter flavours give it a pleasingly sharp bite. Its colour suggests it is the one which truly deserves to be called the black stuff and it pulls off the trick of being light without tasting watered-down.

Lows : We found it to be surprisingly fizzy for a stout, although it did lose its head very fast and was (Cork people look away again) almost completely flat by the time we got halfway through our glass.

Verdict : Solid.

Star Rating: * * *

O’Hara’s Leann Folláin

€2.50 for 355ml, €7.04 per litre

Highs : We have a sneaking but unconfirmed suspicion that this Carlow brewery is also responsible for the M&S stout, but its own “Extra” Irish stout is in a class of its own. It has bitter coffee undertones and a depth of flavour that leaves the canned stouts in the ha’penny place. It’s 6 per cent but doesn’t taste strong.

Lows : It might be a little daunting at first and if you’re expecting a creamy stout with a big head, prepare to be disappointed as this delivers very little by way of a head. It’s the most expensive of the lot and will also prove hard to get as it is aimed mostly at the export market (we found it in the always excellent Drink Store in Dublin’s Stoneybatter). If you can’t find this, O’Hara’s regular brew is pretty fine too.

Verdict : Pricey but worth it.

Star Rating: * * * * *