New Kit Guides Pairing of Food and Wine

Choosing a wine to go with a meal shouldn’t be a difficult experience. Unfortunately, many people find pairing food and wine a confusing and intimidating exercise.

Louis M. Martini Winery in the Napa Valley has just developed a tasting kit called Food First that clears up some of the mystery about how wine goes with food by educating people about taste preferences and by providing a simple, user-friendly pairing guide.

The Food First kit is really two programs. The first is a tasting exercise that clearly demonstrates how different types of food change the taste of a wine. The kit contains samples of various foods (tomato sauce, salsa, dried cherries) that represent different points on the flavor spectrum, tasting spoons, step-by-step scoring cards and even a demonstration video to start people off.

After procuring a bottle of wine, users begin by tasting the wine alone and then with each of the foods, recording their likes and dislikes. Although preferences will vary, it quickly becomes obvious that the wine tastes different with each food flavor. And that is the point: To show, in an experiential way, that the taste of wine changes with the food.

Once people grasp this concept, they’re ready to move on to the second phase of Food First, which is applying the experience to the foods they eat. Food First’s innovative taste matrix, developed by chef and educator Jamie Morningstar Bertoli, shows how to pair the flavors and style of a meal with the flavors and style of a wine. The taste matrix is divided into four quadrants, with a cooking style axis from light to hearty and a flavor axis from mild to strong.

People can refer to either the flavor or sauce types or the sample dishes to locate their meal on the quadrant. Each quadrant suggests wine types to complement the flavor and cooking style. Sample recipes for dishes in each quadrant are also included in the kit.

Just in time for holiday gifts, the Food First kit provides ammunition for anyone who has felt helpless when confronted with selecting a wine to go with a meal. There’s even a wallet-size pairing matrix for “emergency” references.

The Food First kit is available by mail for $19.95 plus shipping and handling from Louis Martini Winery. To order, call (800)321-9463.