Delicious Apart, Terrible Together

Come February I’ll be tasting wines with some regional distributors in order to learn more about the mysterious drink and its many varieties.

Since wine is mostly aftertaste, it can be paired very effectively with food. Dinnertime wine choice is a complicated art; there are no “rules” but most people generally find that certain combinations work better than others.

For example, a dry white wine is delicious with carrot dill soup; the sourness of the wine contrasts and complements the ginger in the soup beautifully.

The same wine with a barbecued burger, though, would taste like nasty hooker ass—even though the wine and the burger would each taste great if consumed separately.

I first realized this principle of “Delicious apart, terrible together” at the age of five when, after an early-morning episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy, I added orange juice to my leftover Coco Puff milk. I gulped it down and immediately felt as though I could puke hard enough that the other end of my digestive tract would exert terrible suction and lodge the kitchen chair halfway up my asshole.

The experience forever destroyed my desire to combine liquids of any kind, which is why I grew up to be a blogger and barista instead of a high-grossing chemist.