Tea and food pairing

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John_B
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Tue Jun 16, 2020 2:03 am

I've never written about this subject because I never really do this. I drink tea with food, just not in the sense of achieving complementary effect.

I did just write comparing wine and tea preference curves, what one would learn to like over time for both, but that's different.

For this I referenced a tea sommelier (a working title, someone trained in wine and tea pairing with food, doing that work), and a wine expert. I'll cite both here so there will be no need to read the whole post, except to hear more input from the tea professional:

http://teaintheancientworld.blogspot.co ... ring.html

From Joshua Linvers:

Tea in a pairing behaves differently than wine, if for no other reason than sheer amount of ‘sensations’ wine can be bountiful in, be that acidity, tannin, and alcohol or the flavor sensations of sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, umami, and spicy (although spicy not so much)...

With pairing tea, you are often forced to take a different approach because you can’t go head to head with a lot of foods and expect the tea to come out on top or even equal. It plays the gentler, more passive role in the marriage...

With tea you need to take another approach — you either use the tea to cleanse the tongue afterwards and highlight nuances in the food that you’ve observed and hope that the pairing might bring in focus; or you use the tea as a set-up to put the food in a better light...



From Dan Senkow (a professional wine maker; about wine, but it helps with context and parallel):


The first and most important rule is drink what you like. If the quote un quote best pairing for a dish is something one doesn’t like then it is not going to work.

Second there is no such thing as an expert for all people. Everybody is the expert for what they like. No one is the arbitrator of taste. It is true some people may know more about the way a wine is produced from a technical standpoint. However, they do not know more about how it makes the individual feel.

In simple terms one may either use an element in the wine to compare or contrast. So, this may be done with flavors, textures, weights, or a mixture of the above. Example a heavy lobster bisque with a light crisp wine or a rich opulent creamy one.

Remember it is the marriage of food and wine, they both have to make each other better or they shall split apart. The wine and the food must have a place to fit in. If the dish is a complete package all on its own, the wine has to fight for a spot to fit in. We know how that works in relationships.Together greater than the parts they must be.
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