Wine & Food Matching Made Easy

Don't you love it when someone else figures out the perfect way to handle a situation ~ and they share it with you??

Matching wine and food for entertaining can be a frustrating experience, especially if you don't consider yourself expert in either category.  Do you pick the wine first?  Or do you set the menu and hope you find a proper wine that you can afford?  And, what if you're serving multiple course???

When we're in need of some savvy wine & food pairing information, we're thankful that these resourceful guides ~including interactive web tools, iPhone apps, and printable charts ~ figured out interesting ways to help us navigate wine & menu matching.



(1) Food and Wine Pairing ~ check out their "Wine Board" interactive pairing tool...either match food to wine or match wine to food.  We also appreciated the simple rules of the Food & Wine Pairing Guidelines.

(2) Hello Vino ~ perfect for the beginning wine lover, there is a simple step-by-step question & answer process that helps pair wine for the meal or to select a wine based on taste/flavor.  Gotta love their iPhone application!  A great Twitter follow, too...

(3) Match My Wine ~ another interactive wine pairing web tool helped us to not only explore matching options, but also to share/upload any of our best matches into their database of thousands.  We like the easy reference categories for courses and recipes...

(4) Natalie MacLean's Wine & Food Matcher ~ Natalie MacLean's wine reviews and tweets are already a favorite of ours on Twitter.  We enjoy the simplicity of this web tool (with a mobile download) with the choice of food and wine...don't miss her collection of food & wine pairing articles!

(5) Wine.com ~ we've been fans of this online wine purveyor for over a decade (proud card-carry Wine Steward members!!).  How to select the perfect bottle of wine offers a step-by-step guide for picking out wine for a meal, as a gift, or to fill in the gaps in your wine cellar.  Specific to food and wine matching, take a look at Wine & Dine an interactive selection tool that takes a more detailed look at your meal plans to find appropriate matches.

(6) Wine Intro ~ do you prefer simple visuals?  The basic printable charts offered on this site will quickly and effectively introduce you to fundamental pairing guidelines for wines and champagne.

And, don't forget that winemakers know a thing or two about matching food and wine.  Take a web trip to these fine wineries, and see what they have to say...

• Danzante (italian for "dancing") focuses on providing perfect mediterranean dishes (recipes included!) to pair with their Pinot Grigio, Chianti, Merlot, and Primitive wines.
• Ferrari Carano Food & Wine Pairing Guide ~ suggests flavor profiles to assist with menu planning and pairing, along with seasonal recipe recommendations.  Their best rule of thumb is to drink what you like - how can we disagree??
• Kendall Jackson Pairing Basics ~ introducing the concepts of weight, texture and sweetness into the selection process.  Their beautiful Pairing Guide can be printed and posted for easy reference.
• Rosemount Estate ~ offering up "Ramsay's Rules for Pairing" including recipes from the Hell's Kitchen personality.
• Geyser Peak ~"Wine and Food Pairings 101" is a friendly, non-jargon article outlining the basics to pairing from a respected winemaker's perspective.

Of course these are only a handful of the wonderful resources available to guide your wine and food journey...did we miss any of your favorite sources?  Please share! Finding new entertaining treasures is as good as discovering gold!