Ten things you really shouldn't eat with wine

I’m sure this will get me slaughtered by my food and wine matching buddies but, sod it, here goes!

Think back, long before the days when you started drinking wine. When you slurped Coke along with your beefburgers or Marmite soldiers did you pause to consider whether the combo worked? Did you, for tastebuds’ or ritual’s sake switch to Fanta lemon when the mammy served up fish fingers? Did you hell.

So why is it that a lot of mature citizens go trembly at the knees when asked to pick a bottle from a restaurant wine list? How come so many of us get ulcers agonising over whether we should drink sauvignon blanc or chardonnay with our breast of chicken supreme?

The answer is most likely because those wine drinking friends who have gone further down the track are reading the back labels of wine bottles or listening to wine writers and lecturers laying down the law about the exactitudes of wine and food matching. Some of the former have made a good living spouting about it.

I’ve maybe said it before. The marriage of wine and food is like any other marriage. Ten per cent are made in heaven, ten in hell and the other eighty per cent bumble along in between. So rather than say what wine you should drink with what foodstuff, I’m going to give you ten things that I consider shouldn’t be consumed under any circumstances while drinking wine and declare open season on everything else.

First and foremost of these is artichoke, the globe variety at least. One sip of wine and this delicacy will turn to metal in your mouth. If you are perverse enough to enjoy sucking on ball bearings, go ahead.

The next is ice cream, particularly the non-dairy variety we’ve come to regard as the ‘standard’, though it’s really sub-standard. Ice cream is too cold to harmonize with any wine and the fat in non-dairy ice cream quickly turns to tasting rancid.

Crisps, or indeed anything else with lashings of salt, like anchovies or strong blue cheeses murder the taste of wine.

Asparagus. Many sommeliers say it’s the hardest wine match of all and they are pretty spot on. You’ll find many suggestions, from Loire sauvignon to late-gathered riesling. Nothing works for me.

Raw tomatoes. It’s amazing how much acidity they contain. Nothing makes good pinot noir taste like paint stripper so rapidly.

Radishes, likewise raw onion and pungent horseradish. The bitter compounds, acidity and secreted oils play hell with your taste buds. The strong smell destroys the ‘nose’ of an accompanying wine.

Strawberries. Few agree with me on this one but despite experimenting with everything from Champagne to ‘stickies’ I’ve never found a satisfactory match.

Anything pickled, gherkins,walnuts, whatever cause wines of all kinds to turn sour and metallic. Pickled herring is great with schnapps, though.

Milk chocolate, good job I’m not fond of it. I can find wines aplenty to drink with good dark chocolate but the high fat and sugar content of the pale sort makes any wine a turn-off.

Lastly, coffee. It plays hell with the taste buds for a good half hour after consumption, which is why it’s best enjoyed solo or at the end of a meal after the wine’s finished.