04/25/05 Food and wines - Sweet wine pairings

Welcome to Vine to Wine, this is your host Linda Moran, and it is food and wine pairing day. Join me after this break when, as promised from yesterday, I am going to give you some ideas for foods to pair with sweeter styles of wine. As we touched upon yesterday most us do not think of sweet wine as an option with anything other than dessert. But in fact it is great with some types of savory foods. The major reason for this is, that a well made sweet wine, has enough acid in it to balance out the amount of sugar left behind after fermentation. This also allows it to go well it with savory foods. So which wines are we talking about here? Well mostly wines made from white grapes such Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc etc. If you are a fan of spicy Asian cuisine you will find not only do these types of wines bring out the flavors that lay under the heat but they will also subdue the heat and create an entirely new experience. A dish that I very much enjoy when paired with a semi sweet Riesling is a pan roasted chicken with a spicy mustard sauce. When I have way too many jalapenos in my garden I toss them into some white wine vinegar to marinade. When the vinegar is sufficiently hot I combine it with sesame oil to create a dressing to toss onto matchsticks of cantaloupe as an appetizer during the summer. And yes I serve a cold sweet wine with it. It is simple and my guests rave! For this recipe visit our website at vine to wine dot net and thank you for joining me on today's Vine to Wine.