TorontoWine.Com

your guide to wine in the city

Food & Wine

This page has four sections:

• Matching Principles
• Find The Right Wine
• Food & Wine Cookbooks
• Party Planning

Visit the Restaurants and Wine Bars page if you'd like somebody else to do the work, whether it's cooking or pouring.

Matching Principles 

1. Match the weight of the wine to the weight of the dish, the weight being the substance or heaviness found in both.
2. Match a wine to the most predominant taste on the plate.
3. Balance the texture of the dish with the wine.  Keep in mind the flavours of both the dish and the wine and how they can react together.

f you want to read more on the general principles of food and wine matching, visit Ottawa based Natalie MacLean's website for useful information and review the links below for some useful articles.

• Matching Food and Wine by David Rosengarten
  
• Food and Wine by Sainsburys
  
• The Happy Marriage of Food and Wine by Robin Garr
  
• Food and Wine by Winematch

Find The Right Wine

The Food Network has a very useful summary showing what foods go best with each major grape.  

If you have a particular dinner in mind, and you want to know the best wine for it, look the meal up via a wine/food matching tool and see what comes up.  Try Nancy Maclean,  Robin Garr  or The Internet Wine Guide

Food & Wine Cookbooks

Looking for a gift  for your favourite cook.  Here are two starter suggestions.  On your left, The Wine Lover's Cookbook by Sid Goldstein.  On your right, "The Wine Lover Cooks" by Tony Aspler and Kathleen Sloan, published by MacMillan Canada .  

Another author to check out is UK based Fiona Beckett who has weekly wine and food columns in the Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph.   She is a contributing editor to Decanter, writes regularly for BBC Good Food and has appeared on television and radio.  Try "How to match Food and Wine" or "Eating & Drinking: An A to Z of Great Food & Drink Combinations, both published by Mitchell Beazley.  

Still another is Andrea Immer, one of the USA's leading wine educators, and one of only 13 women in the world who have been appointed Master Sommelier by the prestigious Court of Master Sommeliers.  Andrea was named Outstanding Wine & Spirits Professional by the James Beard Foundation in 2002, and was selected by Bon Appetit Magazine as Wine & Spirits Professional of The Year in 2004.  Check out "Great Tastes Made Simple" or "Everyday Dining with Wine.

Cooking with Booze.com features a couple of great books (Cooking With Booze and Entertaining With Booze) as well as recipes and useful features on entertaining, BBQs and current trends to name but a few.

Best bets for buying food & wine books over the counter are Indigo/Chapters (various locations), The Cookbook Store at 850 Yonge St, or the World's Biggest Bookstore at 20 Edward Street.  For online acquisition, visit Amazon.com The link provided is to Books / Cooking, Food & Wine / Drinks & Beverages / Wine / Food & Wine.  The twelve most popular titles will be displayed initially.  If you are looking for a particular author, use the search feature.

Party Planning

Do It Yourself:  If you are a do-it-yourselfer, the rule of thumb for calculating wine consumption at a food/wine function is to allow 1/2 a bottle per person.  I recommend a 50/50 red/white split in summer and a  60/40 red/white split for the rest of the year.  However the type of food selected may alter the equation.  Hormel Foods is an excellent reference for the purchase of various types of appetizers, and Kendall Jackson have a good entertainment planning guide under the Wine & Food category

Outsource:  If the thought of organizing your function is giving you nightmares, there are various experts in and around the Toronto area, who would be happy to step into the breach.

Richard Kitowski and Jocelyn Klemm, a.k.a. The Wine Coaches, are certified sommeliers who specialize in providing customized wine-themed events to groups of all sizes.  They also have their own agency, TWC Imports.

Richard Best (The Frugal Oenophile), Edward Finstein (The Wine Doctor), and Maureen Moore of Functions Etc. can organize a customized wine tasting event based on your specifications.  

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