FOODS AND WINES HAVE MATCHING CODES

THE CONCEPT

Foods and Wines Have Matching Codes

(Anyone remember Garanimals, where little kids got dressed by matching the animal on the shirt to the animal on their pants, alligator to alligator, lion to lion? It’s kind of like that!)

So, just like the children did not have to know anything about fashion to get dressed, you really don’t have to know anything about food and wine to pair them. All you have to know is if a food and a wine are in the same color profile, they go together. Then, you just look at the number code of the wine, from 1 – 4, to know exactly which foods in that color profile will work best with a specific wine. There are so many choices, you are free to explore and choose what works best for you. You can be your own Somm!

5 PAIRING PROFILES

It’s a breeze to learn – just 5 colors and 4 numbers. The colors represent a dominant flavor molecule. The numbers represent the residual sugar content, from 1 (very dry) to 4 (sweet)

GREEN – ANISE

(Cool, herbaceous, minty, grassy)

YELLOW – SAFFRON

(Rich, creamy, buttery, and luscious)

ORANGE – CAPSAICIN

(Hot and spicy, savoury, and aromatic)

RED – UMAMI (BEEF)

(Chewey, beefy, concentrated)

BLUE – MAPLE

(Sweet, butterscotch, toffee, salted caramel, chocolate)

The foods in each category pair perfectly with the wines in each category because they share the same dominant flavor.

The Numbers are easy – from 1 – 4, 1 being the driest wine with the least amount of residual sugar left over from fermentation, and 4 being the sweetest, with the most residual sugar left over from fermentation. The numbers apply to the wine.

So for example, a Green -1 is a dry wine and a Blue 4 is a sweet wine. Note that sweet is not the same as fruity. Some wines are fruit-forward, as they are made from ripe grapes that get lots of sun, but they still finish dry. Juicy, fruity flavors come from the ripeness of the fruit. How dry or sweet a wine is comes from the R.S. (residual sugar, which is the sugar in the fruit that remains as the grapes are fermented into alcohol). The higher the alcohol content, the lower the residual sugar. A wine that is 8% alcohol is sweeter than a wine that is 14% alcohol by volume (ABV). Since this percentage is required on the label, it is a good way to estimate the sweetness of the wine.

For our purposes, number 1 is very dry, numbers 2 and 3 are off-dry (not bone dry, but aromatic and dry), and 4 is sweet.

PAIRING SYSTEM

For example, Prosciutto and arugula pizza with pesto would match with the Green 1 or 2 wines. You could choose a white Vernaccia, a Cinsault rosé or a Cabernet Franc, if you wanted a red.

So I decide I want a white wine with my arugula, pesto and prosciutto pizza. I choose “Vernaccia.” Vernaccia is a white wine grape found in many Italian wines. The Vernaccia grape is most commonly associated with the wine Vernaccia di San Gimignano from the town of San Gimignano in Tuscany. It is one of the top wines from Tuscany, and the region’s first white wine with a DOCG (Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita classification.) It is bright, citrusy, clean and crisp, with distinct notes of fennel and basil (which is why it works so well with pesto!)

Floral and herbal notes, citrus fruit, and a dry, crisp quality dominate the flavor of Vernaccia wine. It’s a medium-bodied wine with good acidity and a notable finish of flinty minerals or almonds, coming from the sand and clay soils of its environment (terroir).

“Panizzi was born with the first vintage of this wine, in 1989. Produced from grapes originating from the totality of our winery’s vineyards (Larniano, Montagnana, Santa Margherita, and Lazzeretto) Vernaccia Panizzi is the modern interpretation of an ancient wine full of history.” (winemakers notes)