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Learning to match food and wine But how can you know whether a pairing will work? Experience is the best teacher, and here's an excellent suggestion from reader Tim P.: Set up a "cause and effect" wine tasting, a sociable gathering in which participants taste and compare small amounts of specific foods and wines specifically chosen to go well together. This is a great idea! I've always recommended group tastings as the best quick way to learn about wine. By gathering several wine lovers for a social event, you can open more bottles than you would normally try during an evening at home, making it possible to compare and contrast and talk about the wines with like-minded friends. A planned food-and-wine tasting would add an extra dimension to that, making it possible to check the conventional wisdom by trying both obvious matches (red wine and beef) and not-so-obvious pairings like red wine and fish. Here's one way to do it: Prepare about a half-dozen foods that can be served in small tasting amounts, and serve them with a lineup of compatible wines. You could keep things focused by serving one pair at a time, but I like the idea of having all the wines and foods out at once so participants can mix and match to see what happens. Here are a few matching pairs that should make for a good tasting:
There's plenty of room for variation, though, and if you try this or something like it, I hope you'll let me know. If you would like to join an online discussion on food-and-wine-matching topics, please drop by our Food Lovers' Discussion Group, http://www.wineloverspage.com/cgi-bin/sb/index.cgi?fn=2. Or, if you prefer, send me E-mail at wine@wineloverspage.com. I regret that the growing circulation of the "Wine Advisor" makes it difficult for me to reply individually to every note. But I'll answer as many as I can; and please be assured that all your input helps me do a better job of writing about wine. Please tell your wine-loving friends about The 30 Second Wine Advisor, and invite them to register for their own free weekly copy at http://www.wineloverspage.com/wineadvisor.
Value French red 
Chateau Mas Neuf 1998 Prestige Des Gibelins Costières de Nîmes ($9.99)This earthy wine from the Southern Rhone is a clear ruby color, with tart cherry and leafy green aromas. Spicy red fruit flavors, light and fresh, finish with a tart cherry impression and crisp, tangy acidity that serves it well at the dinner table. U.S. importer: Kysela Pere et Fils Ltd., Winchester, Va. (Feb. 26, 2001)
FOOD MATCH: Works well with bits of leftover pork loin tucked into Vietnamese banh xeo pancakes.
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Essential Wine Tasting Guide 
PUT A WINE MENTOR IN YOUR POCKET: You've been bitten by the wine bug and you're starting to get interested. You've learned to take a moment to stop, look, swirl and sniff before you enjoy what's in your glass. But the sheer complexity of it worries you just a bit: How can you ever learn all those tasting words and master the basics sufficiently to make wine appreciation easy?
If this dilemma sounds all too familiar, I invite you to take a look at Glen Green's trademarked new Essential Wine Tasting Guide. Glen, a wine lover and professional wine maker in Australia and France, has created a remarkable little quick-reference guide to serious wine tasting in a slick, portable format that literally slips into your shirt pocket, wallet or purse. Slip it out, open it up, and it unfolds to reveal 34 mini-pages of compact wine-tasting information including more than 1,000 specific descriptions to help guide you in the analytical tasting of wine. Just 3 1/2 by 2 1/4 inches, it's about the size of a business card, and it comes with a clear plastic holder to keep it like new. I was so impressed that I asked Glen's permission to offer the Essential Wine Tasting Guide for sale on Wine Lovers' Page. It's $8.95 plus $2 shipping and handling in the U.S., $4 in other countries. If you would like to take a closer look, the Guide is on display at http://www.wineloverspage.com/cgi-bin/click.pl?url=www.Wineloverspage.com/guide.
You are on the subscription list because you registered during a visit to Robin Garr's Wine Lovers' Page. If for any reason you no longer want to receive this publication, simply send a short E-mail to 'wine@wineloverspage.com' asking to be unsubscribed (and, if you wish, offering us any suggestions you may have as to how we could have served you better), and we'll remove your name from the list. We do not use this list for any other purpose and will never give or sell your name or E-mail to anyone. Please contact us in the same way if your E-mail address changes. And of course we welcome feedback, suggestions, and ideas for future columns. Send us E-mail at wine@wineloverspage.com. A note about our HTML Edition: Please note that as of December, 2000, we have temporarily suspended publication of an HTML edition (with images), because of persistent technical problems. However, if you signed up for this edition, we are keeping your preference in the database, and you will get it again if and when we resume it. All the wine-tasting reports posted here are consumer-oriented. In order to maintain objectivity and avoid conflicts of interest, I purchase all the wines I rate at my own expense in retail stores and accept no samples, gifts or other gratuities from the wine industry.
If you'd like to talk about wine online with fellow wine enthusiasts around the world, we'd be delighted to have you join the interactive, international forums in our Wine Lovers' Discussion Group. Vol. 3, No. 11, April 2, 2001
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