The Best Way to Learn How to Pair Wine Is to Eat Potato Chips

"Myself, I say there is naught nor ought there be nothing so exalted on the face of God’s gray earth as that prince of foods … the muffin!" OK, apologies to Frank Zappa and his classic weirdo jam "Muffin Man," but come on. Muffins? Meh. Now, potato chips — they descend from heaven trailing clouds of glory. And they work really well for wine-pairing seminars, as I’ve discovered many times over the years at the Classic in Aspen.

See, here’s the thing. Pairing wine and food is simple at its core because wine just flat out goes well with food. There are actually very few wine pairings that are truly awful, though admittedly there are some exceptions: mackerel and Cabernet, which tastes like licking a roll of pennies; artichokes, which contain cynarin and can make wine taste hideous; brut Champagne and wedding cake, because the sweetness of the cake makes the wine come off screamingly acidic, but then who cares because everyone’s drunk at that point anyway.

But if you are interested in pairing wine and food, potato chips are a great learning tool. That’s because they’re an ideal way of isolating simple taste characteristics: saltiness, tartness, sweetness, spice/heat, and so on. Lately, I’ve been using the chips from the folks at Wine Chips because they’re actually designed to go with wine (and are also excellent), but honestly, any flavored chips will do. And the nice thing is, as much as I think the Classic is the best wine and food event on, well, God’s gray earth, it does cost a pretty penny to attend. But you can pair potato chips and wine right at home for a song.

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Five Pairings to Try

Classic Potato Chips 

One word here: Champagne. Salt and fat both love Champagne, and vice versa — the wine’s high acidity and the prickle of those bubbles are the ideal preparation for the next chip, and the next, and the next, and so on. Plus, salt intensifies flavor and reduces the perception of bitterness. The latter is why people sometimes sprinkle salt on grapefruit — it doesn’t increase sweetness so much as it makes the grapefruit, which contains a compound called naringin, taste less bitter, which then fools you into thinking it’s sweeter; the tongue is a weird thing. If you don’t feel like splurging for real Champagne, Cava from Spain works the same trick effortlessly. 

Barbecue Chips 

Barbecue chips get their flavor from a weird range of ingredients — honey powder, onion powder, garlic powder, hickory smoke powder, malted barley flour, tomato powder, the list goes on. But one thing that’s common to almost all of them is sugar. You could pour a mildly sweet wine with barbecue chips, but who wants sweet wine with barbecue chips? Instead, try something ripely fruity and luscious, like Napa Zinfandels or Spanish Priorats. 

Salt and Vinegar Chips 

One rule of thumb is that acidity (tanginess) loves acidity when it comes to wine and food. A vinaigrette on a salad, for instance, will actually make a tart white like Sauvignon Blanc taste less sharp and more fruity, and that’s true for vinegary chips as well. If you don’t believe it, take a sip of tart white wine, eat a vinegar chip, and then take another sip — the difference is eye-opening.

Salt and Black Pepper Chips

One of the baseline approaches to wine pairing is matching like with like — essentially, choosing flavors that echo each other rather than contrast. Black pepper chips are peppery (um, genius at work here, please keep clear). The weird but true thing is that wines can also be peppery. It’s not only that they seem that way, but also because certain grape varieties contain a compound in their skins called rotundone — a bicyclic sesquiterpene, if you really want to know — which humans can perceive in parts per trillion. So that peppery Syrah, or Mourvèdre, or Petite Sirah, or even Grüner Veltliner (if it’s fermented with its skins; most white wines aren’t) is actually peppery. Pair it with a black pepper chip, and you’re likely to see that characteristic come out even more — unless, of course, you’re one of the 20% of people who are genetically incapable of smelling rotundone at all. 

Hot A.F. Spicy Chips 

Austin-based brand Krakatoa Hot Chips is at the forefront of a wave of chip makers taking people’s fondness for spicy heat — lots of spicy heat — and turning it into chip form. But they’re only one of many brands out there making jalapeño chips, habanero chips, and even ghost pepper chips. The point is what hot, spicy flavors do to your palate; it’s not a flavor so much as an effect: Capsaicin, found in hot peppers, actually fools the neurons that sense heat in your mouth, which is why your tongue quite literally feels like it’s on fire. You can’t really mitigate the effect easily — as everyone knows — but because capsaicin is alkaline, a super-acidic white, especially served cold, balances things out. Or just drink an ice-cold glass of Baileys, since milk products work, too.

Top Illustration by VISBII