When pairing advice meets real life
Food and wine pairing interests me because it connects two things I enjoy: cooking and wine. When I plan a meal, the question often comes up quite naturally: which wine could go with this, and why? I like looking at both sides of that question. How can a wine complement the food? And how does the food change the way the wine tastes? I am interested in the classic rules, but I also like testing where they work, where they become too narrow, and where a less obvious combination may be more interesting.
The idea behind food and wine pairing is simple: the right wine can make a dish more enjoyable, and the right dish can show a wine in a better light. In practice, it is often less simple. There are many good books, charts and guides on the subject. We use them and learn from them. Basic principles such as acidity, sweetness, fat, tannin, spice, bitterness and intensity are useful. They help explain why some pairings feel fresh and balanced, while others feel heavy, flat or simply wrong.
But we have also noticed that a lot of classic pairing advice does not always fit the way we cook and drink. Some guides are very technical. That can be interesting if you like an analytical approach and want to understand the structure of a dish and the structure of a wine in detail. For me, however, that can quickly become too scientific. Other guides are strongly based on classic dish-and-wine combinations such as roast lamb with Bordeaux, oysters with Chablis or goat cheese with Sancerre. These examples can be helpful for understanding the concept, but they are too limited for me.
We also like to travel and bring inspiration home, so we enjoy different styles of cuisine: German, French, Italian, Asian-inspired or fusion. I like fresh and seasonal ingredients, a focus on vegetables, smaller portions of meat or fish, interesting combinations of ingredients and, preferably, straightforward preparation.
The same is true for wine. We enjoy classic regions and well-known wine styles. But we also like to explore beyond the obvious: smaller producers, lesser-known regions, grape varieties we are still learning about, wines we brought back from a trip, or bottles that simply looked interesting. These wines do not always appear in pairing tables. And even if they do, the recommendation may not match the exact dish we want to eat.
The questions we need to answer for a good pairing are often quite obvious:
- What is the main character of the dish? Is it the sauce, the spice, the texture, the acidity, the herbs, the fat, the sweetness or the roasted flavour?
- Is the dish light or rich? Fresh or earthy? Creamy or sharp? Spicy or mild?
- Do we want the wine to support the dish, refresh it, soften it, or create a contrast?
- And most importantly: which wine from our actual wine list could do this job?
That last question made the biggest difference. A general recommendation is helpful, but only if you can translate it into a bottle you actually have. It does not help much to read that a dish might work well with a certain style of wine if that wine is not in the house, or if your bottle is similar in theory but quite different in reality.
Why we built our own Wine Buddy
So when ChatGPT became available, I started experimenting with how it could help here. This is how our Wine Buddy started. The Wine Buddy is our personal AI-supported wine pairing assistant. It is based on our own wine list, our food preferences and the way we cook. We use it as a companion to help us find the pairing we want for that evening — based on the food, the bottle, our mood and what is actually on our wine list.
When we ask for a pairing, the Wine Buddy first needs details. It should not just recommend a wine because we mention chicken, pasta or vegetables. It asks what is in the dish and how it is prepared. A chicken dish with lemon and herbs needs different thinking from chicken with cream and mushrooms, or chicken with soy, ginger and chilli. The same is true the other way around. If we start with a bottle, the Wine Buddy can help us think about what kind of food could suit it. Not in a generic way, but based on the wines we actually have and the food we actually like.
The Wine Buddy helps us compare options and understand the reasoning behind them. It can suggest why a spicy dish may need fruit, freshness or a little sweetness rather than a very tannic red, or why a creamy sauce may benefit from acidity. If we want to, we can ask for alternatives or further explanations. And even if we choose a pairing that is more experimental or unusual, we understand what we are trying to do.
So our Wine Buddy is our thinking partner. In the end, the final decision stays with us. And sometimes we simply open the wine we feel like drinking. For us, the value of the Wine Buddy is that it makes the thinking process more personal. It connects general pairing principles with our own bottles and our own cooking. It also helps us learn. A good explanation of why a pairing might work — or why it might not — is often as useful as the recommendation itself.
Over time, you start to notice and remember the patterns. You understand why acidity can help, why tannin can be difficult with heat, why sweetness can be useful, why umami needs attention, and why the sauce often matters more than the main ingredient.
A more personal way to pair food and wine
This is the direction in which we want to explore food and wine pairing: not as a rigid rulebook, but as a way to match our personal taste and style. If you find this interesting, you will find a practical guide on how to build your own Wine Buddy here. We are also working on a broader guide to food and wine pairing the Wine all the Way way here. Sign up to our newsletter below if you do not want do miss it.
This article at a glance
Topic: Food and wine pairing in real life
Focus: Why classic pairing advice does not always fit the way we cook and drink
Our approach: Personal, practical, non-dogmatic
Featuring: Our AI-supported Wine Buddy
Date: May 2026
Text & Photos by Birgit Voll
