Perhaps no other world cuisine can benefit from food and wine pairing as much as French food. After all, the heart of French tradition is rooted in savoring the balance and flavors of the food, both as individual ingredients and complicated dishes. A perfect French wine pairing only serves to enhance the experience.How do you pair food and wine?It is a well-known fact that the French enjoy a glass of wine with many of their meals. It’s a small luxury on a daily basis, with no expert guidebook necessary. The wine drunk on these occasions will be a local perhaps even, home grown and made wine. More complex wines are kept for special meals and occasions. The Basic Rules on PairingRule 1: Red wine goes with meat, and white wine goes with seafood and poultry.Rule 2: Throw out the first rule and drink what you like.Fortunately, the hard and fast rules for enjoying wine with your meal are archaic and irrelevant, at best. The point is to take pleasure in sipping the wine and enhance your dining experience, not meet strict guidelines created for another person’s palate.

If you’re like most people, you have a small number of wines that are your favorites and don’t do much experimenting beyond those few bottles. The key to starting pairing different varieties of wine with the meals you cook is to understand the basics of wine tasting. The acidity, body, aromas and flavors of a wine are all factors to consider when searching for one to go with a specific dish. These attributes mean different thing to different palates.Acid: Sour and sharp notes of the wine will determine the acidity level. This can best be equated to the way biting into a super sour apple feels on the palate; it will hit your tongue with a sharp sensation. Body: The body of wine is established by the weight and mouthfeel when you taste it. It can be light, also called thin, or it can be heavy and creamy. As with other wine attributes, the body is an opinion of the taster.Aroma: The aroma, or bouquet, of wine, is all about how it smells. The nose of wine can be predominantly one or two notes or a complex medley of aromas that blend and change as the wine is swirled and exposed to more air.

Try to identify earthy, floral, fruity, and nutty notes, among many others.Flavor: The flavor of the wine is mostly determined by its aromas; what we smell is what we taste. You will rarely identify a flavor that is completely unrelated to the smell. For example, you are unlikely to encounter wine that has a light, fruity bouquet, only to find that it has deep, earthy flavors. You will be much more likely to find wine with nutty aromas that develop into coffee-chocolate notes of flavor.Matching food to wine is easier than it sounds. Once you’ve tasted wine and determined if it is light, spicy, sweet, or rich, you can match it to your dish. The general rule of thumb is to pair wine with food that equals its intensity. A flavorful chicken recipe will go well with a light, spicy-sweet white, whereas steak with a heavier sauce is better suited to a full-bodied, strong red. If in doubt, Champagne will be a welcome selection for nearly every food, from appetizer to dessert. A historian’s favourite places to eat, walk, stay - and try onion chocolate - in this historic port city

Genoa was a medieval rival to Venice. It’s not been primped for tourists like Venice, though. Genoa was a shipbuilding centre and is a working city – it has an affinity with Liverpool, Glasgow or Newcastle. Some people think it’s a bit grubby, but if you enjoy getting off the tourist trail and finding out about a real Italian city, it’s got so much to offer. The city is tiered like a wedding cake, rising above the old port. buy canadian ice wine ukThe funicular railway runs to Righi for fantastic views, or there’s an elevator (it goes sideways as well as up and down) to Castello d’Albertis, a bizarre museum. new wine 2015 live streamBelow here there’s a lovely statue of a young Christopher Columbus, who was from Genoa, staring out to sea.best wine to buy in london

Genoa is the oldest football club in Italy and has a football museum. Go to a derby match (Genoa v Sampdoria) if you can, I always go with my father-in-law: it’s another way to see the real city. There’s an amazing tiny chocolate shop on Vico dei Castagna called Romeo Viganotti, that the Genoese like to think only they can find. Owner Alessandro Boccardo is a shy Willy Wonka-type character, quite otherworldly, who makes all kinds of amazing experimental flavours (the onion one didn’t quite work) with 200-year-old machinery. top wine brands name in indiaThe boxes are beautiful and make great presents.great red wines under 20 dollars My book starts with the story of the transsexual prostitutes who live in the medieval centre (the largest in Europe). top 100 wine china

Around one corner you may have an old violin-maker, around the next the prostitutes. Stencilled signs put up by US forces at the end of the second world war can be spotted in the little streets on the edge of the port. They warned soldiers not to go into town because they could be stabbed, get lost or catch something from a prostitute. It wasn’t picture-postcard Italy back then. Pesto here is astonishing: so vivid, so green. best spanish red wine 2015You’ll always be disappointed with any other after tasting it in its hometown. best wine to go with cheese pizzaThe Genoese also love tripe. best cities for wine in franceYou see schoolchildren wandering along with little cardboard cones that in Britain would be stuffed with chips, but here they’re full of glistening tripe.

Da Maria is a cheap trattoria on Vico Testadoro, serving the food an Italian grandmother would cook – pasta, rabbit, octopus. Office workers go there for lunch and you join the scrum to pay downstairs. At the other end of the scale is Zeffirino, run by a charismatic guy who knew Sinatra and cooked for Pavarotti – who is said to have rented a flat above the restaurant. I remember having a delicious sea bream with taggiasca olives and tomato there – a level above anything I’ve had. There are amazing wine bars all over Genoa, but the one I go to with my wife (who’s from here) is Cantine Matteotti, hidden on a tiny street called Archivolto Baliano. They just scribble the wines they have open on a blackboard – about 10 white, 10 red and a couple of sparkling – and serve simple plates of cold meat or aubergine parmigiana. It’s really atmospheric with marble tabletops and a zinc bar. In any other city you’d come out feeling like you’d been mugged but here you might spend €20 between you and come home happy and sloshed.

Many hotels here are business-focused, but Vecchia Genova, set up by former BA flight attendants, is beautiful with reasonable rates. You can also find some fantastic Airbnb places in the atmospheric buildings overlooking the port. Visit the Galata Museum in the old shipbuilding site on the waterfront to get your head around the city’s naval history. There’s a reconstruction of one of the old war galleons that dominated the Mediterranean from the time of Ben Hur to the 16th century. It was a real merchant pirate city, they took what they could from the harsh life of the seas. A fantastic place for walking is Monte Beigua, a national park just out of town. There are lots of places to stay that are cheap as chips – Rifugio Pratorotondo has a big restaurant and rooms if you want to stay overnight. A bunk bed costs €15 if you have your own sleeping bag (€18 with sheets), and they have private rooms for €25 per person. Nicholas Walton’s Genoa, ‘La Superba’: the Rise and Fall of a Merchant Pirate Superpower, published by Hurst, is out now