Food and Wine

Discovering a combination of food and wine is one of the highest hedonist pleasures available to all of us.  I will never forget getting home after a long, cold day with both fridge and cellar bare.  A tin of vegetable soup was all I could muster, and there was half a bottle of sherry left in the fridge.  Now granted that my expectations were low, but that combination of warm, hearty soup and tangy sherry was so good it almost brought tears to my eyes.

Some say that one shouldn’t bother with all those rules about matching food and wine, but for me there’s no question that some wines go better with a dish than others, so it is worth having a think before opening any old bottle.  Generally I find the trick is to match the body of the wine to the food.  So if the food is delicate (e.g. fish or salad) I’m looking for a light bodied wine (which can be red); the more robust the food, the more full bodied the wine.  I’m not too worried about flavours, because sometimes it is nice to have complementary flavours while at other times contrasting flavours can work.

At Summertown Wine Café we’ve come up with a Red Wine Flight and a White Wine Flight.  Each has 3 half glasses of different wines which we’ve matched to 3 small plates from our menu.  It allows you to explore and discover for yourself some classic and some surprising combinations.  Come along and give them a try.

Rob Malcolm