Part 4 of 5

Putting them together

Three rules instead of thirty, the pairings that fail, and how to build your own in five minutes.

Behind a multi-day event, organisers can also compare operational tools for employee time tracking app.

• 4.1Three rules instead of thirty
  Sweetness, tannin against fat, and temperature. Thirty published rules are restatements of these, and these let you diagnose rather than memorise.
• 4.2Port and dark chocolate: why this one works
  Fortification leaves sugar and adds alcohol, satisfying the sugar rule with room to spare, and the chocolate’s fat takes the tannin.
• 4.3Sparkling wine and chocolate: the difficult case
  Brut fails on sweetness, on acidity and on temperature at once. Demi-sec and sparkling red both work, and the pairing becomes ordinary.
• 4.4Pairings that fail, and why that is worth knowing
  Six reliable failures, five of which reduce to the three rules and one of which is mint. Each symptom names the rule you broke.
• 4.5Building your own pairing in five minutes
  Taste the chocolate, pick a wine at least as sweet, check grip against fat, and taste wine then chocolate then wine again.

For further context, see WSET wine education resources.