Ok, there are two things you need to know about the folks at Viridian Wine. 1. We love food! We love to cook it, dine out and talk about it. Number 2. We love entertaining, even if it is a simple meal of cheese and crackers around a campfire or a large casual company picnic with potato salad and burgers.

All these shared meals around here have me thinking more and more about the art of pairing wine with food. Hey, it’s a tough job, somebody has to do it.  Opening a bottle of Virdian Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris or Rose to “taste test” along with some new recipes I’ve been trying out on my husband and the rest of the Olsen Family Vineyards crew is hard work, but really rewarding!

So what have I been finding out? All kinds of neat stuff, such as some great resources for learning more about wine pairings. Here are three books I can really recommend:

Everything You Want to Know About Pairing Wine With Food by Robert and Virginia Hoffman. This book is on sale for less than $10.00, but it is chock full of practical advice and is easy to read. The funniest chapter is on pairing wines with fast foods like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Nachos! Ha, Take that wine snobs!

Perfect Pairings: A Master Sommeliers Guide to Practical Advice for Pairing Wine with Food by Evan Goldstein. More expensive, but much more detailed than than the above listed book by the Hoffmans, I like this book because it is very comprehensive. This book also includes 58 recipes and wine suggestions for each as well as six seasonal and special occassion menus. Highly Reccommended!

Food and Wine Pairing: A Sensory Experience by Robert Harrington. Amazon.com has this to say about this HUGE 336 page book. It is sort of the bible on food and wine pairings:

Lays out the basics of wine evaluation and the hierarchy of taste concepts

Establishes the foundation taste components of sweet, sour, slat, and bitter in food, and dry, acidity, and effervescence in wine, and looks at how these components relate to one another

Discusses wine texture, and the results of their interactions with one another

Examines the impact that spice, flavor type, flavor intensity, and flavor persistency have one the quality of wine and food matches

Includes exercises to improve skills relating to taste identification and palate mapping

Provides a systematic process for predicting successful matches using sequential and mixed tasting methods

Gives guidance on pairing wine with foods such as cheese and various desserts, as well as service issues such as training and menu/wine list development

Anyway, next week I’ll tell you about some of the wine pairing websites and blogs I’ve been reading. I hope this is helpful information for you. I can’t wait to get back in the kitchen and start experimenting some more.