• All wine has acidity (sour taste). It is the acidity that helps food taste “better”.
• Some wines have some residual sugar left in it to “balance” high levels of acidity. Think how sour lemon juice (citric acid) is until you add sugar and make lemonade.
• Dry wines have little to no sugar left in it.
• People are born with an “appreciation” of sweet tastes, but have to learn to “appreciate” sour tastes. (Put a drop of lemon juice on a babies tongue and then a little sugar. Then you tell me which one makes a happy face.) Nobody starts off drinking Dry Martini’s. They progress for example, from strawberry daiquiri’s and rum & Coke to Scotch on the rocks.
  

Where is this guy going…

• Although the rules of red wine with meat and white wine with fish & chicken still hold true, if you don’t like dry wine (yet), then do a sweeter white with your meat. The acidity in the wine will still compliment the food to some degree
• Eventually, new wine drinkers will learn that sweet wine dulls the palate senses and your appetite, and graduate to dryer wines. (That of course, is why dessert is served after a meal and not before.)

Stay tuned to the next lesson for the basics of why wine pairs with food so well.