Matching wine with food: are there any rules?

Red wine with meat, white wine with seafood - is this rule past its use-by date?

In the 1963 film adaptation of From Russia with Love, Sean Connery dines on board the Orient Express with the requisite beautiful companion and a villain masquerading as an ally. Bond orders Taittinger Blanc de Blancs to go with their sole but the villain orders Chianti. When the man is revealed as Bond's enemy, Connery curls his lip. "Red wine with fish. Well, that should have told me something."

Bond's nemesis meets a predictably messy end. However, red wine and fish need not lead to violent, or even social death. If I had a dollar for every menu on which I've seen salmon paired with pinot noir I could probably treat myself to a bottle of top-of-the-line Taittinger. But salmon-and-pinot is one of those exceptional couplings that proves an otherwise generally sound rule.

Many diners and drinkers report that aggressively tannic reds (the tannins come mostly from grape skins and seeds) clash with seafood to create a metallic flavour.

Tannins may not be solely to blame: research published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry in 2009 found that wines with a higher iron content (whether they were red or white) heightened tasters' perceptions of "unpleasant fishy aftertaste" when eating seafood.

The "white with seafood" adage remains useful but is best treated as a guide rather than an ironclad rule. It owes its origins to well-founded conventions about coupling like with like. Weighty wines tend to go best with similarly robust foods, and delicate ones fare better with lighter foods, which is not to say that all meats are powerfully flavoured, or all seafood gently flavoured - think of poached veal or grilled tuna. The same goes for wine.

Not all reds are big, tannic beasts and not all whites are delicate. Cooking methods and sauces play a critical role in determining what wine style will best complement any finished dish, so by all means experiment - preferably with low-tannin reds for fish - if you're game. As the man from MI6 well knows, the most dangerous liaisons can be the most exciting.