Pairing Wine with Taste Categories: Sugar, Spice and All Things Nice

What Are the Key Taste Categories?

Taste categories represent the basic tastes that we experience in our mouths when we consume food and drink. The categories cover literally everything you can think of, from obvious sweet flavours we get from fruit and cakes, right through to more bitter sensations we experience with nuts, smack-across-the-face spicy heat, and milder savoury flavours like egg, chicken and fish.

In the culinary world there are five taste categories:

Sweet – honey, strawberry, toffee, sweet potato
Sour – lemon, gooseberry, sourdough, vinegar
Salty – cheese, ham, anchovy, brine
Bitter – walnut, artichoke, dark chocolate, coffee
Umami – mushroom, egg, soy, green tea

In the wine world, we add two more categories into the mix, giving us seven essential taste categories in total to consider when pairing wine with food:

Heat – chili pepper, ginger, mustard, peppercorn
Fat – butter, fried fish, coconut curry, cream cheese

Some tastes are much easier to pair with wine than others, which is why picking a bottle of vino for your cheese board is relatively straightforward, while choosing one for your spicy Friday night curry is much harder.

Let’s take a closer look at why this is the case.

There are three taste categories that are pretty easy to pair with wine, two of which being salty and fatty, which both apply to cheese. When you begin to dig deeper into these taste categories and their suitability for pairing with wine, it becomes clear why combinations like wine and cheese are considered such a classic!

Pairing Wine with Sour Food

The obvious flavours that spring to mind for the sour taste category are lemon, grapefruit and other zesty flavours, but it also encompasses balsamic vinegar and types of bread like sourdough (which brings us back to cheese boards again!). A good rule to remember when it comes to picking the best wine is that two acidic components together reduce the overall acidity on the palate. So don’t be afraid to choose an acidic wine for a dish with sour ingredients.

Why Not Try
Thai-style Lemongrass Chicken with an acidic German Riesling, like Hiestand Asia de Cuba Riesling.

Pairing Wine with Salty Food

The salty taste category includes many types of meat, aged cheese and halloumi, shellfish and foods that have been soaked in brine or loaded with added salt (most types of fast food). Salty food can make you very thirsty, so it makes sense that you’d need a wine that refreshes the palate and balances out your taste buds. A great rule to apply when pairing wine with salty food is to choose a light to medium-bodied one that offers lots of sweet red fruit notes that counterbalance the salt.

Why Not Try
A charcuterie with a medium-bodied red that has lashings of fruity, plummy flavours, like Ovington’s Cabernet Merlot 2020.

Pairing Wine with Fatty Food

The fatty category covers many types of red meat, fast food, rich creamy sauces and curries, anything smothered in butter or oil, and high-fat cheeses like Brie and blue cheese. One of the best wine and food pairing rules for anything fatty or oily is this: choose an acidic wine that will cut through the fat / grease and refresh the palate.

Why Not Try
Fish and Chips with the driest, most acidic bubbly you can find, aka a ‘Brut Zero’ or ‘Zero Dosage’ fizz, like Champagne Ayala Brut Nature (Zero Dosage).

The remaining four taste categories are much trickier to pair with wine, and require more consideration when choosing a wine that will complement them. You only have to think of how odd wine can suddenly taste after you’ve been eating spicy food or dark chocolate to begin to understand that some types of food can easily overpower, or even alter, your taste buds. It’s never impossible to pair wine with these more problematic taste categories though, just much more difficult with less room for error.

Pairing Wine with Sweet Food

The sweet taste category, of course, covers pretty much every single dessert you can think of, as well as foods that contain natural sugars such as fruit and honey. We can also sometimes taste sweetness in savoury foods too, such as sweet potatoes and cooked parsnips and carrots. Sweet food pairs with sweet wine, but the last thing you want to do is choose a wine that will turn your sweet food into a sickly sweet experience on the palate. So, always keep in mind that two sweet components can complement each other, but only if they’re the same intensity.

Why Not Try
Milk chocolate brownie with a relatively sweet, fortified wine, like Fonseca 10 Year Old Tawny.

Pairing Wine with Bitter Food

This category refers to walnuts and other nuts that give a bitterness on the palate, as well as dark, high cocoa content chocolate, and vegetables that offer a soft bitter taste such as broccoli, artichoke, radishes and Brussel sprouts. The rule to remember when pairing wine with bitter food is that two bitter components will be overwhelming, so it’s best to avoid high tannin wines. Opt for low tannin reds or wines made from white grapes.

Why Not Try
Stir-fried Brussel sprouts with a Cabernet Franc that has vegetal notes, like 1749 Chinon 2020.

Pairing Wine with Umami Food

Umami is perhaps the most obscure of all the taste categories, with most people far more likely to ask “what is umami?” rather than being able to reel off a list of umami examples. In a nutshell, umami refers to foods that contain glutamic acid. In terms of flavour, it can be hard to describe, but it’s a subtle savoury taste that can be found in eggs, mushrooms, avocado, asparagus, cucumber, seafood, meat and soy sauce.

A difficult taste to describe, and a difficult taste to pair with wine, umami is as tricky as they come! One key thing to remember that will always help you though is that umami emphasises bitterness of wine tannins. So, the rule for umami is to pair it with light-bodied, low tannin reds like Pinot Noir or white wine.

Why Not Try
A sushi and sashimi platter with a light, zingy white wine like Domaine Billaud-Simon Chablis 2019.

Pairing Wine with Hot Food

Now, we all know what counts as hot food, so this category requires far less introduction! We’re talking spicy curries, dishes seasoned with fresh ginger or accompanied by mustard, horseradish or wasabi. Heat can obviously be very powerful and cause your mouth to feel like it’s on fire, but did you know that it can also increase alcohol burn in wine? To avoid blowing your head off, your wine choice needs to be low alcohol, light and refreshing in order to take the edge off the beating your taste buds are taking!

Why Not Try
Chicken Jalfrezi with a crisp Sauvignon Blanc, like Mountain View Marlborough Sauvignon Blanc 2020, which has a super low ABV of just 9.5%.

Head to our Wine and Food Guide for everything you need to know about pairing wine with your favourite food! This is where we go into extra detail about how to pair wine with specific types of poultry, red meat, seafood, game, cheese, vegetables, herbs, spices, desserts and even fast food favourites like pizza. You name it, we’ve covered it!

You’ll also find plenty more wine and dish pairing suggestions, such as Pinot Noir and Beef Bourguignon (found here), throughout our delicious guide. Enjoy!