Food wines and wines to drink

Predominantly in the New World countries, but increasingly so in Europe, wine is a beverage: something you use just like beer, namely to drink and enjoy. A lot of wine producers today are pretty consumer oriented and adjust their supply to this development. Hence, they produce wines that are enjoyable by themselves – so without the need to consume them with food. Technically you are then producing wines with a soft palate and an easily accessible fruitiness.

However, this softness and accessibility (often with a whiff of sweetness) are also the factors responsible for these wines often performing less well at the dinner table. There, the need is for wines that are built to pair with food and that possess characteristics like acidity, tannins and structure. And all these make a wine less enjoyable to drink as such. So, there are wines to drink and there are food wines, and even food wines can differ substantially. Some pair with most everything served alongside it, others demand rather specific pairings with food to show well.
Easily pairing wines are e.g. white Mâcon or white Côtes du Rhône, wines that WineStein will (therefore) often pick as pairing well. More ‘picky’ wines like sparklers or sherries will have a harder time to make it into the high ranks of WineStein results. WineStein not attributing a very high score to a certain wine type will only tell you its opinion on how a certain dish is expected to pair with that wine type.

Keep in mind this does not mean it won’t be a great wine to enjoy on its own, without food. The wine could also well do a lot better with a different dish. It all depends… Einstein was the man who developed the Theory of Relativity. We made the choice to let WineStein’s name reflect this. A wine’s appreciation is relative as well, to the context within which it is consumed.