A wine dinner consists of a collection of well-chosen wines accompanied by carefully planned carte du jour. A wine dinner should start at five before food thoughts contaminate hungry minds. Here are helpful pointers for those new in this chic style of dining.
Never Plan a Wine Dinner on a hungry Stomach
When people are hungry, the stomach does the thinking and food engulfs the minds. In the early 70’s, people use to plan the food menu first—meat with red wine and fish with white wine were applied. However, the wine lifestyle has changed all that around. Today, the wine makes the statement—only food that the wines approved will be on the table.
Choose a Wine Dinner Theme
Themed wine dinners can be fun. Here are few themes to start with:
- ‘70s Vintages - featuring wines from vintages in the ‘70s complete with music of the decade
- Casablanca – featuring champagne and sparkling wines
- Top Hits – featuring big massive wines with high alcohol contents
- Great and Famous – featuring famous wines from great vintages
- Pure Sweet Pleasure – featuring sweet wines of Sauternes and Port
There are other interesting themes for a wine dinner party. Some are mix and others are specific wine themes like wine flights, wine verticals, and wine horizontals. In addition, wine dinner in a place that offers a great view is the best choice.
Make Wine Food Pairing Perfect and Interesting
Finding the right food for the right wine seems to lead to difficulties in wine and food pairing. Wine and food pairing is a palate thing dependent upon the sense of smell and taste. To begin pairings, use your tongue to pick up the overall tastes: sweet, salty, bitter, or acidic. This is important because uncomplimentary flavors and smells can produce bad combination.
Generally, wine highlights, enhances, and harmonizes the flavors of food. Thus, have a good grip on which wine to serve with which food. Sauvignon Blanc pairs well with salads, poultry, seafood, and cheese. Pinot Grigio goes well with seafood and salmon. Likewise, the elegant flavor of Pinot Noir and the delicate flavor of roast chicken is a match made in heaven.
Most wine dinners have five courses paired with six different wines. In addition, appetizers have to accompany each varietal. Other wine dinners perfect finger foods are cheese platters, dried nuts, or cured olives.
Wine is first serve before the food to taste the wine alone, and then taste the wine again with the food to experience the perfection of the pairing.
Wine Glasses, Decanters, Wine Thermometer and Others
Perfect wine accessories help make perfect a wine dinner. Serving wine correctly begins with correct wine glasses, decanters, wine thermometer, and chillers. One decanter per wine is a requirement. In addition, there must be two glasses per person—different glasses for white wines and for red wines. A perfect host would check the temperature of the wines twice every hour with laser thermometer.
Make the Wine Menu Shine
Not every fancy dinner has to involve Russian Beluga. Not every wine dinner has to have a Cheval-Blanc. However, wines at every wine dinner have to have something to say that provokes a conversation around the table. Fine wines are for those who wish to have a well-staged and well-appreciated wine dinner. Wine selection can be a mixture of older and younger vintages. Admittedly, familiarity about the characteristics of specific vintages helps a lot in balancing the wine selection for a wine dinner.
A spread of bottles of crisp, vibrant, tasty, well-balanced wines and a myriad of wine glasses rising from a table with plates of food is what good wine dinners look like.
Do wine dinners happen in real life? The business of lifestyle can be very elusive. Nothing is what it seems, or else it is probably not lifestyle. A wine dinner is great for Father’s Day entertaining and other celebrations. Certainly, many of us have been to well-staged wine dinners.
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