Re: “I’ll Drink to That: Peach-blueberry pie and wine a sweet pairing,” Aug. 12 lifestyle story.
Thank you to Bill St. John, who writes, “What’s indisputably unpleasant is drinking dry wine with sweet food.” Please, yell it from the rooftops! The fiction that chocolate with dry wine creates symbiotic nirvana has been driving me crazy for years. To make matters worse, people are often so insecure in both their wine knowledge and what is happening on their palate, that they will trust whatever mendacious advice they’re given, usually by chocolatiers.
The truth is that sweetness in food obliterates the inherent fruitiness in wine; the actual sweetness has been fermented into alcohol and CO2.
There is an exception for the 20 percent of the population who have fewer than the average number of papillae (tastebuds). These people require very aggressive flavors to taste at all, but for the other 20 percent, sweet food and dry wine is as awful as orange juice after toothpaste.
Tina Witham, Littleton
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