Don’t feel you have to open every, or any, bottle of wine your guests bring to your dinner party – unless that is they have taken as much care as you to match wines to the food.
Well-matched food and wine enhance each other and will work better together than either one will on its own. Basically, you want the flavours to harmonise and the “weights†to be equal – you don’t serve a delicate wine, such as schonburger, with salmon and hollandaise sauce. Japanese chefs rate schonburger highly for drinking with sushi, because it lets the food speak for itself. Ever-popular chardonnay, with oak and buttery flavours, can easily overwhelm many foods, but does go well with creamy, buttery sauces such as hollandaise. (But don’t serve chardonnay with asparagus, even if it is served with a creamy sauce).
Tasmania’s cool-climate white wines tend towards acidity, which makes them a perfect choice for acidic dishes, such as sauces with tomatoes or citrus in them. Try a riesling or sauvignon blanc. These will also go well with salty dishes, such as smoked salmon or cured meats. Pinot grigio and pinot gris famously get along with most foods that go with white wines, or even light red wines, so can be a way of playing safe.
The tannins in cabernet sauvignon can dry the mouth, but go well with juicy protein such as rare steak or roast beef. The plum, mushroom, earthy flavours of pinot noir go well with wallaby, duck, quail, turkey and guinea fowl.
A wine with dessert must be sweeter than the dessert or the wine will taste thin. Serve an icewine, a botrytis riesling or semillon, or late-harvest riesling. Brews such as porter and stout can go surprisingly well with rich fruit desserts such as Christmas pudding, as does a muscat or tokay.
As a general rule, match the meat or fish and/or the sauce with the wine, rather than the accompanying vegetables or side dishes. Artichoke is notoriously difficult to match to a wine, and if you are serving it with vinaigrette you are best to forgo wine with it.
It is difficult to give specific advice. Wines can vary greatly within their variety, all pinots are not alike, for instance. To be really sure, have a practice (but not dry) run of your dinner party, and taste a couple of wines with each course to make sure you have it right. Enjoy your research.
White
Chardonnay: Wooded chardonnay with creamy sauces on fish, pasta, veal, ham, chicken and turkey. Unwooded chardonnay will go with foods suited to sauvignon blanc
Gewurztraminer: Asparagus, spicy dishes, smoked food, smoked salmon
Riesling: Chicken fillet, sweet glazes (on pork for example), mussels, Asian dishes, pork, sashimi, scallops, dry riesling will go with asparagus
Sauvignon Blanc: asparagus (a fruity sauvignon blanc); oysters, salmon, salty dishes, cured meats, dishes with tomato sauces
Pinot Grigio: most foods, including hard-to-match asparagus
Schonburger: sushi, sashimi, delicate foods
Sparkling: oysters, petit fours
Red
Cabernet sauvignon: roast beef, steak, sausages, duck, paté
Pinot Noir: braised chicken, beef, duck, lamb, roast turkey, salmon, wallaby
Merlot: meat casseroles, beef, braised chicken, venison, turkey, lamb, venison
Baralo, Sangiovese: Meat casseroles, roast beef and lamb, steaks
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