Wine can complement any food on the planet from cheese to chocolate and steaks to salads, finding the right wine is where it gets tricky. When dealing with chocolates you have to keep them stored at a temperature that is slightly below room temperature, and the same goes for red wine.

However, you do not want to eat it cold because then you lose a lot of the flavor. Wine tasting is an art; it is a very palpable practice that with time and experience can become quite enjoyable.

There is a sensual sort of experience with each different type of wine, some are going to create a very relaxed cozy feeling and others are going to create a more energetic warm feeling. There are so many different variables to take into account when matching your wine, at first it can be daunting.

For those of you who are not as experienced with wines, it would be good to begin by simply matching taste and color. Generally if you have dark thick meats you will want deep red wines like cabernet sauvignon, for cheese tasting parties a more versatile lighter white wine would complement the cheese better, something like pinot grigio.

For sweets like chocolate covered strawberries i
t would be a very light pinkish wine, or a moscato would blend excellently. Matching to color is a good way to get close and to start developing your palate for the whole wine matching process.

But, it is going to take more than just matching colors. You have to start paying attention to how the wine complements the food, how it clears the palate in between the bites, how the wine tastes with the residual taste still in the mouth.

Soon you will start to notice how well a malbec stored at 15 degrees Celsius will pair with almost any meat, and even how it will complement Argentinian dishes, if you absolutely need to drink wine with those. There are some foods that wine is just not made to go with.

Mexican dishes are such a unique blend of flavors, they would be much better with a horchata, but if you really are determined to try wine with a Mexican salad it would be your safest bet to go with a sipp-able sangria. Soon you will know from the top of your head which wines pair with what meals, then you can start becoming a real snood and judging different blends, bottles and years.

A wine's taste has a lot to do with where it was produced and how long it has been stored. When you start noticing those attributes then you have really developed your palate.