Food and Wine Matching

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

food and wine matching is either an extremely complex, detailed subject, a set of rules embedded in one’s national culture, or an activity only for gastro-bores, according to one’s point of view.

To the French, not surprisingly, wine is simply part of gastronomie in general, and few French people would dream of describing a wine without suggesting which dish or dishes it should be served with. France has traditionally looked to its chefs for expertise in tasting and selecting wine, and it was only in the late 1980s that wine began to be viewed as a distinct subject in its own right.