Think of food and wine as you do your wardrobe

Don’t obsess over which vintage goes with your meal, drink what you like

I recently did a few presentations on food-and-wine pairing, my main point being that it has been made far more complicated than it needs to be. There’s a small industry of people telling you to drink this wine with that food. Apps, books, websites and blogs are devoted to complicating what is not a very complicated process.

I always wear a tie when I give these presentations, not because they’re formal, but because I have a special tie. I bought it a decade ago when I was visiting San Francisco, and was in Haight-Ashbury, the heart of hippiedom in the 1960s. It’s more tourist-dom now, but there are some vintage clothing stores, and at one of these I found my tie.

It’s vintage 1960s and fashionably (then and now) narrow. But its real value is the label: the little tag that usually reads something like “100-per-cent silk. Made in Italy” reads, instead, “Wear with brown or blue suit.”

Maybe many items of clothing carried this sort of advice in the 1960s.

Maybe socks came with “Wear with black or brown shoes” advice and tags on jackets recommended “Wear with white shirt with red and blue stripes.” You can imagine how complicated it could get if you followed all these instructions, then ended up wearing a shirt telling you to wear a black belt and trousers suggesting a brown one.

If it seems ridiculous that clothing co-ordination should be so formalized, why should wine-and-food pairing be any different?

Some people might look twice at our sartorial selections, but we’re confident and comfortable with them. Sometimes we might ask someone which skirt/shirt/ shoes/jacket look better, but we don’t run to apps and websites in an agony of indecision.

It comes down to having confidence in your choices, and most people have drunk enough wine to imagine how any wine might go with food. Keep a few different wines on hand, and if you find you’ve made a truly indigestible wine-and-food pairing, open another bottle, and drink the first one another time.

In the end, if you’re having a dinner party or a barbecue, the wine and the food quickly recede into the background, and the social interactions are most important. If someone asks you next day if you had a good time, you’re less likely to comment on the food-and-wine pairing and more on the people who were there and what you talked about: “It was a fun dinner. Marci was her usual hilarious self, but you should have seen what Don was wearing! It looked as if he’d dressed in the dark!”