There are endless opportunities to celebrate food and wine relationships at your club. However, it’s less about culinary compatibility and more about the overall member experience. Every club has wine-loving members or committees that represent the voice of the club. Religion, politics, and wine are the big three topics on which every member has their own view.
I have always promoted wine as a perfect complement to food. Wine elevates our perception of elegance, much like fine chinaware, crystal, and silver accoutrements. With more education, I delved into the intricate relationship between alcohol and our minds, often pondering the age-old question: “Does wine make food taste better?” Is this a theory passed down for generations or just an old wives’ tale?
As we explore this mysterious relationship between wine and food, you’ll be surprised to discover that the answer is not straightforward. Could we be experiencing a placebo effect that our industry has sold us?
Wine by itself can taste good, and savoring it makes you slow down while eating. It forces you to pause, swallow, and then taste again, countering the habit of eating fast, which doesn’t give our minds a chance to identify flavors and textures. Sipping breaks up this process, providing complementary tastes and reducing the saturation effect, where the intensity of flavors diminishes with each bite. This is why the first sip of coffee is always the best, emphasizing the importance of mindful eating. The pace of eating has always been the secret to an enjoyable meal, with effective tasting menus offering small bites to savor between courses.
So, is wine enjoyment influenced by our subconscious? Before we ever drank wine, we observed others enjoying it. Yet, our early experiences often contradicted this belief, as most generally don’t like their first sip of alcohol.
Returning to the question: does wine make food taste better? Some argue that wine is not a universal flavor enhancer. While acids and tannins in wine can elevate certain flavors, wine can also make some foods taste worse.
How did wine and food pairing begin? Historically, wine has been associated with religious rites and used as a salubrious beverage, medication, and food accompaniment. Originally, wine served as a palate cleanser and food condiment, especially when safe drinking water was scarce. Wine’s primary role was to suppress unpleasant attributes rather than enhance flavors.
Wine can uniquely intensify the bitterness of certain foods, like olives and grapefruit, and dull the sweetness of desserts. The interplay between wine and food depends on many factors, including the type of wine, food, and individual taste preferences. Wine does not significantly impact perceptions of sweetness, saltiness, sourness, or bitterness but reduces the perception of umami, the savory fifth taste. Wine can also numb the ability to distinguish different flavors, making food taste more monotonous.
So, why do we believe that wine makes food taste better? Our expectations can trick our minds into believing that wine elevates our dining experiences. This suggests that the price of wine might influence our perception more than its actual taste. Our brains become more active in areas associated with pleasure and reward when we think we’re drinking expensive wine.
For some members, especially supertasters with heightened taste sensitivity, wine can negatively intensify the flavors of all foods. Much of our food experience is tied to our mental state, and wine can dampen these sensations, making them less pleasurable. Positive memories and associations with wine can also influence our perception.
In the words of Paul Prudhomme, “Food is a powerful emotion,” and for that reason, wine dinners will always have a place in our hearts, regardless of the benefits or drawbacks of this pairing.
Club + Resort Chef – June 2024
Lawrence T. McFadden, CMC, ECM is a food and beverage training consultant and search executive with KOPPLIN KUEBLER & WALLACE, a consulting firm providing executive search, strategic planning and data analysis services to the private club and hospitality industries.